


Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rewritten

by greenmoon830, SpringStar2004



Category: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Brown Ranger, Gen, Lesbian Trini (Power Rangers), Morphin Grid (Power Rangers), Multi, comic inspiration, jewish jason (power rangers)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:40:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 48,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23650075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenmoon830/pseuds/greenmoon830, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpringStar2004/pseuds/SpringStar2004
Summary: Alternate Universe for the Power Rangers. Set in 2019 with some crossover with the Boom! Studios comics Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Go Go Power Rangers, with inspiration from the 2017 movie.Everyone has problems. Jason takes things too seriously sometimes, Zack is attracted to power but doesn't respect it, Trini has an inclination that she'd rather not admit, Kim can't stop moving, and Billy has Asperger's. He's also new to school in general, having been homeschooled. These five are about the unlikeliest people on the planet to be able to protect it, but then again, they are the Power Rangers, so it's kind of a given that they can. They aren't that good at it, though, and when things start heating up, they have to adjust and learn their way around- because once a ranger, always a ranger, and they can't stop now.DISCLAIMER: This story takes place in 2019, in what would be our world if it weren't for the fact that Power Rangers exist. Therefore, pop culture and other things will be referenced and mentioned, but we do not own any of it.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 1





	1. In the Beginning...

The Angel Grove High School students were on a field trip. They were split into groups of five, given maps and compasses, and told that they needed to find ten hidden things and then navigate their way back to camp before sunset.

"Hey guys! Come look at this!" Kimberly waved to the rest of her group, pointing to a clump of quartz that was peeking out of the sandstone. It sparkled in the sunlight like the calm ocean in the cove where she and Trini liked to swim.  
"Oh! You found the quartz crystal. Great, that’s eight items out of ten." Billy walked over, scribbling something in his notebook and pulling out his phone. He snapped a picture of the crystal, then slid the smartphone back into his pocket.  
"Hey, Trini, how about some music? It's getting boring just listening to that Billy kid jabber away about science and stuff." Zack smiled as Trini hit play on her MP3 player, then snatched it out of her hand and raced ahead. "I got the music, music, music…"  
Jason, who had remained silent throughout the entire walk, folded his arms and followed his friend. "Zack, get back here! Give Trini back her MP3. Billy, would you mind staying quiet for a bit? I'm getting a headache. Hey, what's that?"  
What he was referring to was the glint of metal in the afternoon sun, buried just a few millimeters into the sandstone several feet above his head.  
Everyone fell silent. "This isn't one of the things we were supposed to find, right?" Jason asked his friends.  
"No, it’s not," Billy confirmed, but he checked the list of the hidden things just to be sure.  
"So what is it?" Kimberly wondered.  
She clambered up onto Jason's shoulders to take a closer look, making everyone gasp. Jason shrugged and held her legs confidently, making sure she wouldn't fall. "We do this kind of stuff all the time in gymnastics." He then waited as she scraped away at the sandstone to reveal the shimmering metal.  
"Well, what is it, Kim?" Trini asked as she approached her friends.  
"Some sort of coins… Oh! They have dinosaurs on them! I see a pterodactyl!" Kimberly continued to scratch away at the sandy stone, and all at once the coins fell out of where they were hidden. The other three dove to catch them as Kim hopped down from Jason's shoulders, letting him have a look for himself.  
"That's no dinosaur- that's a mastodon! Awesome!" Zack called out as he looked at the coin that he'd taken from the pile. It was engraved with a detailed mastodon's head that made Zack think that someone had guessed his favorite prehistoric animal.  
"A triceratops! Did you know that the name ‘Triceratops’ came from Greek? ‘Tri’ means three and ‘keratops’ means horned face," Billy said as he picked up the coin, smiling. "You know, there are studies that say the triceratops needed its horns to protect itself from the Tyrannosaurus Rex."  
"Hey, there’s a T-Rex on this coin," Jason realized.  
"Don’t worry, Billy, Jason's not going to hurt you," Kimberly joked, looking happily at the pterodactyl coin in her hand. Billy just stared at her without saying a word, confusion obvious on his face.  
"Billy... Don’t worry, it was a joke," Trini reassured him with a bit of a mental facepalm and picked up the last coin. "Ohh, a saber-tooth tiger! I love cats! I call dibs!"  
Chattering happily, with Billy actually joining in and sharing some interesting facts about their animals, the five headed off in the direction of the next object.

"Hey, Jason, who's that?" Zack shaded his eyes against the sun, squinting to try and get a better view of the humanoid figure off in the distance. "Hang on, there are two now- scratch that, ten! Let's get outta here!"  
"Not so fast!" A dark figure in golden armor blocked their way out as the gray humanoid _things_ surrounded them. "You are not leaving until you return my Lord's coins!"  
"Your lord, huh? How about this for an answer?" Jason retorted, pulling a retractable bō-staff from his backpack and extending it until it was taller than his 5'7 stature. He was one of the shortest in his fencing class, but that meant nothing when it came to kicking ass.  
Kim smirked. She knew Jason."You aren't getting anything from us. If your lord wants something from us, he can come and get it himself!" she added, with a scornful emphasis on "lord".  
"We don't know what’s going on here- maybe we should just listen to him," Billy said, a little nervous and not quite understanding what was happening.  
"Putties! Attack!"  
Within the first minute, Zack had dropped one to the floor with a scissor kick; Kim had used her gymnastics skills to make up for her tiny body and ran up a putty before backflipping to the ground and kicking it on the way down; Jason was slamming his bō-staff into one after another; and Trini and Billy were managing… somehow. They weren't sure what they were supposed to do.  
"Hey, Kim, what do I do now?" Trini called, trying to fend off a putty.  
"Kick it!" Zack, Jason and Kimberly chorused.  
Trini kicked the putty and it fell on the ground. She then continued to the next one while Billy started to study the putty on the ground.  
"Billy, what are you doing?!" Jason called.  
"Trying to figure out what the hell these things are," Billy answered without looking at Jason at all. He took a picture of the downed putty on his phone, not even noticing the putty sneaking up behind him until it was too late. But then it wasn’t. A shimmering blue shield formed between Billy and the putty. "What just happened?!" he asked in confusion, looking at the shield. No one replied; they were all focused on fighting.  
One of the putties threw Kimberly into the air, but surprisingly enough, instead of collapsing to the ground, she stayed up. "Wow, guys, I think I can fly!" She grinned, hitting the heads of the putties as she ran over them, knocking them to the ground one by one. She then dropped to the ground with a cry of delight, bending over into a roundoff and catching another two putties off guard.  
Trini smiled as her friend drop-kicked another putty, then tried to dodge an attack from _another_ putty. The attack missed her completely, and Trini looked up in confusion, only to realize that she was several feet away from where the putty was. She narrowed her eyes. "Whether or not I just teleported, let's see if I can do it again." This time she could feel the wind whipping her as she reached her target and punched it, hard. "So super speed, huh?"  
"Nice one, Trini!" Kim called.  
"Yeah, nice one!" Zack confirmed.  
Jason was in the middle of a fight with two putties near a huge boulder. One of the putties knocked his bō-staff from his hands, so he retreated behind the boulder for a moment before he started to attack again. He leaned against it for a moment, trying to regain his breath- after all, he hadn’t fought so intensely for so long before- when the boulder rolled. "Huh?" He shoulder-checked the boulder, and it flew off the ground, landing on the putties and squishing them. "Well, guys, I think I got super strength," he remarked, still staring at the boulder.  
"God… Trini got speed, Kim got flight, Jason got strength, and that kid Billy got freaking _force fields_ , but what do I get? Nothing!" Zack punched a putty off its feet, making it melt into a pile of steaming goo, then snapped his fingers, trying to use some sort of power of his own. Nothing happened. "Come on, why don't I have powers? This is so unfair!"  
"Can we talk about why the hell we have powers later and stop arguing about it?!" Jason shouted, sweeping a putty off its feet with his bō-staff, which he'd recovered from before.  
"Yeah, that’s a great idea," Kimberly responded, throwing her legs around another putty's neck and tossing it head over heels. She was halfway to the gold-armor guy when Trini ran at him at full speed and hit him.  
"You've started to control your powers already? I misjudged you; maybe you have potential after all. You still haven’t figured out all of the coins' powers, though," the gold-armor guy taunted as he knocked Trini down to the ground.  
"Trini!!" Kimberly cried, flying to her best friend's aid. She stamped on the gold-armor guy’s head, leaving him reeling, and landed near Trini. "How are you?" she asked worriedly, helping Trini stand on her feet.  
"I’m fine, now let’s kick Goldi's butt," Trini replied with a smile.  
"Goldi? That's a great name for him!" Kimberly laughed, launching herself into the air. The girls started to attack it, Trini from the ground and Kim from the air.  
"Goldi?! Did you just call me Goldi?? How dare you insult me that way?! My name is Goldar and I—"  
"Oh shut up, _Goldi!_ " Kimberly retorted, sitting down on the back of his head and stuffing a piece of fabric in his mouth. It was a green flag, their team marker.  
"That was amazing, Kim!" Trini yelled, putting her hand out for a high-five.  
"Yeah, that is girl power," Kim replied, high-fiving Trini as she jumped down.  
By now, the boys- mostly Jason and Zack, since Billy was still busy trying to figure out how on Earth he was creating the force fields- had finished off the remaining putties.  
"Way to go, Kim, Trini, dealing with the big ol' boss." Zack tossed a compliment their way as he jumped down from a ledge.  
"Did you have any doubts we could do it, Zack?" Kimberly teased, a mischievous smirk curving the corners of her mouth.  
"No, no, of course not," Zack stammered, blushing.  
"I’ll be back!" Goldar spat out the flag, then disappeared in a flash of golden light.  
"What just happened?" Billy asked, still confused and a little nervous.  
"Well, Goldi said we got the powers because of the coins," Trini said, taking her coin out of her pocket. She flipped it over in her hands, squinting as the engraved eyes of the saber-tooth tiger glinted in the fading sunlight.  
"But that doesn’t make any sense! We don’t live in a science fiction movie- this is the real world, how come there are things who can give us power at all?" Billy rambled.  
"I honestly don’t know, Billy. You'd be more likely to know about that than I am." Trini sighed. "This is really weird."  
"It’s almost sunset. We should really be heading back to camp," Jason reminded his friends.  
"But we haven’t found all the things yet," Zack countered.  
"Guys, we have another problem," Kimberly noted. She bent down and picked up the compass, now crushed. "Looks like it fell out of Billy's pocket mid-battle."  
"Don’t worry, Billy, it’s not your fault." Trini tried to reassure him, to no avail. She tried placing her hand on his shoulder in a comforting way, but he shrugged her off.  
"But what are we going to do? How can we get back to the campgrounds now?" Zack asked, frustrated.  
"We find a place to sleep somewhere tonight. By tomorrow they'll realize that we're missing and spread out to find us," Jason suggested.  
"Or we could navigate with the stars. I think I know how to do that," Billy offered in an attempt to be useful.  
"I think we should sleep and wait for the morning," Zack told them.  
"So do I," Kim added.  
"Well, that makes three of us, so I guess it's settled. We're staying here tonight," Jason decided.

They walked in silence. All of them were confused and traumatized by the event, and they needed time to process what had just happened. After about twenty minutes of walking, they reached a large boulder that seemed to block the entrance to a cave. Jason moved it easily. "Well, we could stay here," he suggested, slinging his backpack off and settling down near the opening.  
"Woah there, Jason. Shut up the entrance for the night. I do _not_ want to find a snake slithering over me in the middle of the night," Trini told Jason, shivering. In fact, everyone was shivering from the cold except for Zack, which was unusual because Zack was usually the first to complain of the cold.  
Jason shrugged. "If you say so, Trini."  
"We should really talk about what happened," Billy said out of nowhere. All gazes turned to him.  
"Um… Don’t you understand that we are trying to _avoid_ talking about it?" Kim sent a side-eyed glance Billy’s way.  
"No… But that doesn’t matter. We were attacked by aliens or creatures or whatever those things were, and we got powers from weird prehistoric coins! We need to talk about what happened- we can’t just sit here and deny it!" Billy protested. He didn’t know how to deal with all the events that had happened and he didn’t understand why they weren’t talking about it.  
"How is talking about it going to help? We have no clue what happened or why they want the coins and talking about it won’t give us any answers!" Trini argued.  
"Yeah, and maybe it was just a dream. Maybe when we get up in the morning the coins won’t be here and we’re all just dreaming," Zack commented, actually hoping that that was the truth.  
"If it was just a dream, then how are we going to get out of here tomorrow?" Billy asked, pointing at the boulder.  
Jason shrugged, then moved the boulder just enough to allow them to get out should they lose their powers. "I’ll leave it up to you and Trini to argue about whether that’s a smart idea. In the meantime, everyone, pool your food. We need to find a way to make the snacks we have last until we’re found. If the coins are still here in the morning, we’ll deal with the implications of that then; for now, I’m hungry and tired, so let’s just eat and go to sleep."

Kimberly shivered, her thin jacket doing nothing to remedy the chill that they were experiencing in the cave. "Jason, how are we supposed to sleep in this cold?"  
"I can hug you if you want," Zack teased.  
Kim simply stared at him for a moment and moved over to cuddle with Trini, who, for whatever reason, had a thermal blanket in her backpack. Their sleeping bags were in the camp- they weren’t supposed to sleep in a cave. "Hey Trini, why do you have this?"  
"I figured that I could probably use an extra blanket out in the desert. And if I didn’t, then oh well." Trini beckoned to Zack and Billy, who were sitting across from Jason at the entrance to the cave. Jason, his hair glinting copper in the moonlight, had wrapped himself in a sweatshirt and seemed to have already fallen asleep. Zack wasn’t cold for whatever reason, but he wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to sleep next to the girls, so he crawled over and squeezed under the blanket with them.  
Billy shook his head. "No, but thank you. I prefer to limit contact as much as possible, though it is smart of you to huddle together- the larger amount of body heat under that thermal blanket will prevent it from being lost as easily in the night." He dragged his backpack over to him and unzipped it, then pulled a dark blue hoodie out and put it on.  
"He's a bit weird, don’t you think?" Kim whispered when it seemed that Billy had moved into dreamland. The other two, who were already half asleep despite the cold stone surfaces, merely nodded.

Billy couldn’t fall asleep. He was frustrated and agitated by the attack earlier, and his teammates had just badmouthed him when they thought he wasn’t listening. With a sigh, he pulled a flashlight out of his backpack, and, turning it on, he advanced into the depths of the cave. As he walked, the rough crags of the walls turned into sharply angled bumps that looked less natural; rather, it looked like someone was trying- and failing- to imitate the natural appearance of the cave. Like they were trying to hide something.  
He continued to advance, and after a few more minutes he realized that he no longer needed his flashlight. There was a source of light up ahead- probably electric, judging by the equal distribution of light- that shone brightly enough for him to see the walls smoothing out into a sleek round corridor. It now looked precise and modern, the only hint that it was still the cave he'd entered in the stone that made up the walls.  
After the next turn was a white screen of energy that blocked the view of what was beyond it. As Billy drew nearer, tingles of electricity danced around his outstretched hand, making him jerk it back in alarm. Biting his lip, he tried to touch it, but it was completely intangible aside from the prickles of electricity that surrounded him.  
A sudden warmth from his coin startled Billy. He pulled the triceratops coin from his pocket, trying to soak in the warmth, and was almost blinded by the blue glow. In his blindness, he stumbled forward a few steps, passing through the energy with a feeling as though he was diving into water. He emerged on the other side blinded by bright fluorescent lights, but he could definitely feel the fact that this was a tiled floor. In the cave, it was easier to slip and fall on his face.  
His vision cleared slowly, and this first thing he spotted was a round table with holographs hovering above it. After that he saw the shelves and hooks on the walls, and only then he realized that there was a robot standing several feet away, tinkering with a few knobs and wires. "Hey, do you need help?"  
The robot whirled around faster than it should have been able to. It was a glossy copper, for the main part, with hints of an old blue and red paint job, and red data receptors that formed a bar across the disk-like head. "Ai-yi-yi-yi-yi! Zordon, there is a human in here!"  
One of the holographs on the table flickered slightly as it increased in size, revealing a pale face that looked almost, but not quite, human. There was something about the proportions, about the light blue eyes, the sea-blue blotches on the forehead, that seemed off. "Alpha, calm down. I can sense one of the lost power coins in his hand."  
"You mean this?" Billy extended his hand, the triceratops coin lying flat on his palm. "There are four acquaintances of mine back in the cave I came from. They have another four coins."  
Alpha and Zordon exchanged meaningful glances. Then the holographic head turned to Billy, who was playing with one of the buttons on his shirt. "Tell me, have you been attacked lately?"  
"Uh… yeah. These weird putty creatures-" He was interrupted mid-sentence by the robot.  
"Ai-yi-yi! See, I told you, Zordon- Rita Repulsa is out and about! Ai-yi-yi!"  
"I haven't finished explaining! Let me finish! So there were these weird putty creatures, and leading them was some creature that looked like a huge blue ape with wings and gold armor. Kimberly and Trini managed to make it retreat, though."  
Zordon sighed. "It seems Goldar is also out of captivity, which is a sign that Lord Zedd may be as well. The question is why they're working together. Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd have had a rivalry since before my time, so it would be a very powerful threat indeed to force them into working together."  
"Wait, what?" Billy glanced around the room. "Can I go get the others? I'm kind of confused."  
"Very well," Zordon conceded. "Go get your friends."  
"Uh… they're not my friends."

"Guys! Get up! There's something really crazy going on!" Billy raced into the main cave where the others were sleeping, skidding on the slippery surface and face planting on Trini's blanket.  
"What, Billy? We agreed to talk about this _tomorrow_. It's the middle of the night!" Trini grumbled, rubbing her eyes. Then she realized that Billy was on her blanket. "Get off of me!"  
"Trust me! This is something _everyone_ needs to see!" Billy was stumbling over his words, which gave Trini pause. He was usually so eloquent and serious, that to see him mispronouncing words and sounding so on edge made her think that there really was something serious going on.  
"What is it, Billy? It’s not like you to act like this…" Trini rubbed her eyes, still half-asleep. The blanket was tugged off Kimberly and Zack as Billy scrambled upright, and Kim started to wake up as a result. Zack didn’t feel the blanket move, and he continued to snore away. Jason was a little farther away from the others and he couldn't hear the fuss, so he kept on sleeping.  
"Kimberly, you need to wake up. There's something really weird happening." Billy moved around to gently shake her jacket, making Kimberly groan and open her eyes. Just as she placed a hand on the ground to assist her in getting up, Trini tried to stand up and tripped over the blanket with a loud "Oof".  
"I toss around in bed a lot… I guess I tangled myself in the blanket," she explained, wincing as she rubbed her shoulder.  
"I can confirm that," Kim added, laughing.  
"Are you okay, Trini?" Turned out that Trini's groan was what was needed to wake Jason up. He pulled himself up from the floor, carefully walked over, avoiding the blanket, and helped her detangle herself and stand up.  
"Yeah, thanks," she said to Jason.  
"Why are you all up?" Jason asked with a yawn that seemed to split his face, not noticing the still-sleeping Zack. He glanced at his watch. "It's just past four AM. This better be good."  
"There's a giant hologram head and a robot in the cave! You've got to see it!" Billy yelled, breathing heavily.  
"Billy, you probably dreamed that." Kimberly yawned, stretching out and almost smacking him in the face.  
"It wasn’t a dream!" he argued, almost to the breaking point. He gritted his teeth and facepalmed, willing himself to not explode as he paced the cave. One, two, one, two. "I couldn't have been dreaming, because of you, Kimberly Ann Hart!"  
"What?" Kim scowled. "What the hell are you talking about, William Cranston?"  
"Guys, why're you making so much noise? So long as there aren't missiles falling on us or that gold guy isn't attacking again, you don’t have a reason to wake me up!" Zack slurred his words, only just awake enough to speak.  
"JUST COME, DAMMIT!!" Billy lost his temper, grabbing his backpack and storming off in the direction of the energy screen. Trini picked up the blanket from the floor, and, wrapping herself in it, she and Jason followed Billy silently. They were honestly pretty shocked by his behavior- he'd _never_ acted this way before. Kim froze where she was for a moment. Then she held out a hand to Zack, and, after helping him get up, both followed Billy deeper into the cave. Because of the dark, Kim didn’t see the wide smile on Zack’s face when he grabbed her hand.

"See? I told you!" Billy gestured exasperatedly to the energy wall, inadvertently electrocuting himself as his hand got too close. He saw that the others didn't believe him, so he pulled out the triceratops coin and let the blue glow illuminate everything. "Get out your coins- you'll see that they're glowing too."  
Trini was the first to pull out her coin, which was glowing in a warm yellow. "Maybe we'll get answers about the coins if we follow Billy. I don't know about you guys, but I'm going with him," she said, watching in shock as Billy stepped through the energy wall like it wasn't there. The coin's increasing warmth made her drop it, and when she tried to pass through, it was completely solid.  
"I guess you need to hold your coin to pass through the barrier." Billy's voice sounded like he was at least mildly amused by what had happened, as though the opacity of the wall was only one-way.  
Blushing furiously, Trini retrieved her coin from the ground and dashed through, trying to avoid her friends' snickers.  
"Ooh, it’s warm..." Kimberly sighed in relief as she pulled the coin out of her jacket, illuminating her face in pink light. "This feels nice."  
"You didn’t feel it warming up in your pocket?"  
"Um, no. Was I supposed to?"  
"The coin isn’t warm at all. I have no idea what you're talking about," Zack noted, staring at the coin in his hand. The deep violet shimmer didn't provide much light, but it definitely stood out against the darkness.  
"Hey Zack, you coming?" Jason called, sticking his head through the energy from the other side. "Kim and I are already through."  
"Yeah," Zack replied, stepping through with ease.

"Ai-yi-yi, Zordon, now there are five humans here!" Alpha complained as the five teenagers lined up across from the table.  
"Yes, Alpha, but they found the coins. Well, at least five of them," Zordon countered.  
"See, I told you!" Billy folded his arms in a very self-satisfied way. Kim and Zack were gawking at the holographic head, and though they weren't quite as blatant about it, it was clear that Jason and Trini were also surprised.  
"Now can you please tell us what these coins are?" Billy requested, his exasperation extremely evident in his voice. So many things had happened that day and he needed answers.  
"At the dawn of history, there were twelve power coins made by a skilled mage to channel the energies of the universe. Those energies interconnect and shape what is known as the Morphin Grid." Zordon paused for a moment to let it sink in before continuing. "Thousands- no, millions of years ago, they were found by a space sorceress named Rita Repulsa. I had a physical form back then, and as one of the most promising Eltarian soldiers, I was sent after her to return the coins and ensure they were not used for evil.  
"We battled throughout the universe, she to keep the coins, and me to retrieve them. After some time, a third party appeared to try and gain the power coins- a rival of Rita's known as Lord Zedd, and his loyal warriors, Goldar-"  
"Wait a minute- isn’t that the guy Trini and Kimberly fought?" Billy realized, interrupting the tale, but Zordon continued on, unperturbed.  
"-and Silverback. I was forced to kill Silverback in one of the battles, and in that same battle the silver coin was lost. I don't know where it is now, but I hope that it is in good hands.  
"Eventually the fight reached Earth. In that final battle, I succeeded in trapping Rita, along with Zedd, in a sealed canister on the moon, but Rita's last spell forced me into a transdimensional quantum flux pocket-"  
"Hold on, what does this have to do with anything?" Billy interrupted. Zordon ignored him.  
"-and that's why I am currently here as a hologram. At that point, the coins were scattered all over the planet. You five have found the red, black, yellow, blue and pink coins, which bonded with the energies of the dinosaurs and mammals of old, and this is a great responsibility, as Rita and Zedd have escaped through unknown means and it's up to you to stop them."  
"Wait, so we're supposed to stop them!? How? We're just teenagers! What is this?" Trini asked, shocked.  
"I agree with Trini. We have a life- we don’t have time to play superheroes," Kim added.  
"Yes, weird light head, how do we get out of this superhero-y thing?" Zack snapped.  
"I'm sorry. I can sense that the coins have already bonded to you, and that means that you cannot back out now. But you will not be fighting as teenagers- you will be fighting as Power Rangers."  
A colorful glow surrounded them, and Jason looked at his coin in bewilderment as the red light washed over him, turning his clothes into a surprisingly breathable lightweight armor. The helmet was the biggest surprise, though; the black visor was almost completely clear from his side, and somehow it wasn't fogging up from his breathing. He looked around, his eye catching on his friends, who were dressed similarly, but he couldn't see their eyes through the visors. It was eerie.  
"There are three rules of being a Power Ranger. You must never use your powers for personal gain. You must never escalate a fight, unless your enemy forces you to. And you must never reveal your identity. Ever."  
Kimberly was the first to remove her helmet. "God, I hate helmet hair."  
Trini also took off her helmet and shook out her hair, letting the glossy black waterfall tumble down her back. "If anything, I should be the one complaining about helmet hair. Your hair is chin-length, so don’t make a big deal about it." She punctuated her words with elbows to Kim’s ribs.  
Jason also removed his helmet, thankful to find that his baseball cap had somehow been warped to fit in. The strawberry-blond waves would spring out otherwise, falling into his eyes and blocking his vision. He laughed a bit to himself. He _really_ needed a haircut.  
"Woah, I gotta say- this is actually pretty cool!" Zack grinned as he took off the helmet, then did a quick circular kick. "I could get used to this!"  
Billy's fists were clenched, and he kept biting his lip- not that anyone could see that- which, if people knew to read him, were a sign that he was in complete freak-out mode. So many things that had no explanation, and no, Zordon hadn't explained it right. Whatever this super-powerful cosmic being is, he can’t just make them superheroes out of nowhere! Besides, the spandex was super uncomfortable, and the helmet was making him jumpy. "This is so wrong! We can’t do this! I can't do it! I’m not going to run around in this utterly ridiculous and bloody uncomfortable spandex!"  
"Billy, chill. Take off the helmet and calm down." Kim rolled her eyes, completely confused as to what he was talking about. The pink suit fit her like a glove, and it made her feel like she was about to head out onto the gymnastics floor.  
"Ai-yi-yi! It is _not_ spandex! It is an ultra-light poly-movable synthetic armor material!" Alpha, who had remained silent during the story, now spoke up in a fury.  
"So it's basically spandex." Zack snickered.  
"Sorry robot. I wear spandex to the gym all the time. This is definitely spandex," Kim added.  
"Ai-yi-yi-yi-yi! You are insulting the suits! Zordon, they are not qualified for this mission if they say things like this!" Alpha complained, the red receptor bar flashing.  
"Exactly! We aren't supposed to do this!" Billy countered, trying to get away from the whole thing as fast as possible. He stormed over to the spot where they'd entered this place, poked his head out, and quickly retreated. "Nope, nope, nope, nope. Putties out there. Just nope."  
"Well, rangers, this is your cue. Go prove yourselves, and fight for the Earth!" Zordon called.  
"No, no, no, no, no! I am not doing it!!" Billy screamed, sitting down on the floor and covering his face. Then he realized that his helmet was still on his head. "This isn't real! This can't be real! I’m dreaming, it’s just a dream!"  
"Let’s do this! Rangers, move out!" Jason smiled as he and the other put their helmets back on and ran back through the energy barrier. He was feeling the desire to kick some putty butt.

Zack was the first back in the cave, headbutting a putty into a wall and kicking a second one into Trini as she glanced around.  
"Oi! Zack, what was that?" Trini elbowed him in the shoulder before attempting to pull off a double spin kick and failing miserably. She bounced right back up, though, and gasped as a pair of yellow-hilted daggers shimmered into being in her hands. Realizing how she could use them, Trini went into overdrive, becoming a yellow blur as she sped around the cave and slashed at the putties.  
"Nice!" Jason whistled in appreciation, stabbing putties left and right with the red-and-gold sword. His fencing training was definitely coming in handy.  
"Hey, I want a weapon!" Zack complained playfully, hitting a putty with a rapid flurry of punches.  
As they fought, they could hear Zordon's voice, attempting to encourage Billy into joining the battle. "Please, your friends need you."  
"This is just a dream! _Just a dream!_ And they aren't my friends!"  
Kimberly snorted. "Are you for real, Cranston? You have no idea what you're talking about!" she called, strangling a putty with her bowstring. She let go for a moment, spinning into a pirouette-like kick sequence, then grabbed hold of the bow again and flung the putty to the ground.  
"You know, Billy, we might actually _want_ to be your friends! Ever consider that?" Trini added, trying to imitate Kim's sassy tone as she slashed a putty across the sternum.  
"I don't know, Trini… he's kind of been acting like a jerk. If he'd been acting nicer, then maybe…" Zack stared at the axe that had just appeared in his hands, then swung it around with a whoop. "Booyah!"  
Billy, on the other side of the barrier, finally gave in. "Okay, fine, I'm coming!" He dove through the energy wall, tackling a putty off guard- which also caught him off guard- and finished it off with a punch to the face. The lance that appeared in his hand didn't even faze him; if this was a dream, then it was a dream, and if this was real life, then okay, he'll deal with it later. Besides, if it’s a dream, nothing will happen if he joins in- it’s not like he can die.  
Billy swung the lance, catching the putty that was sneaking up on him in the stomach, and a rush of energy flowed through him. Adrenaline. "Hey, is the rush of adrenaline the reason why you enjoy this so much?" he queried of Jason as the putties forced them into a back-to-back position.  
"Um… I guess," Jason responded, whacking another putty on the head and making it stumble back. They managed to defeat the rest in several minutes, by the end of which Billy was breathing heavily and barely holding the lance anymore. A force field protected him from hits, giving him a few seconds of rest.  
Shouts of their names suddenly heard from outside the caves. "Wow, is it already morning? I think those are our classmates!" Zack asked, busy with the putties who were trying to disarm him.  
"Yeah, I can hear Eugene out there," Kim supplied.  
"Eugene? You mean Skull?"  
"Yeah, why?"  
Billy raced back into the weird tech room, searching for a clock. There was a digital one on the hologram table. "It's past six am! Wow, it is already morning!"  
Trini groaned, sticking a dagger into one of the putties fighting her. "Billy, that was a rhetorical question! Zack didn't mean for you to actually check what time it is!"  
"Oops, sorry…" Billy blushed as he dashed back out, retrieving the lance and then dropping it in order to punch a couple of putties.  
"And where Skull is, Bulk will be there too," Jason noted as another familiar voice joined the searchers.  
"You mean Farkas?"  
"I gue- wait. His name is Farkas? What?"  
"Seriously? Am I the only one who actually _remembers their names?_ This is ridiculous!" Kim glanced around her, facepalming- or the closest approximation to one she could do with a helmet on- when she realized that nobody had any idea what she was talking about.  
Zack had just split the last putty in half when they heard a few screams from outside.  
"Crap! They're attacking our classmates! We can't just stand by and watch!" Trini yelled, then dashed outside the cave. The others followed suit.  
While the others kicked some putty butt, Kim led their classmates away from danger. "Are you guys alright?"  
"We're good, thanks. Who are you?" Skull asked the question everyone was thinking.  
"Um… We're the Power Rangers! Now you should get going. It's dangerous around here," she replied, already running back into battle while loading an arrow in her bow.  
"She's amazing…" Skull sighed. "So skilled… so pretty…"  
"Oh, puh-lease. You have no idea what she looks like." Bulk elbowed his friend teasingly. "But let's get real. These guys are _superheroes!_ This is epic!"


	2. Go Go Power Rangers!

Trini was actually having fun as she raked her daggers down a putty's body. She'd had no idea how to handle weapons before that night, but she guessed that if the coins could give them powers, they could also give them instinctive knowledge on how to use a weapon. She blurred into hyperspeed, defeating every putty she touched before it even noticed her, and sliced a few more in half for good measure. Before long, the putties were merely steaming piles of goo, and the yellow ranger slowed to a stop.  
"You guys were amazing!" Skull called, peeking out from behind a boulder. "You're superheroes, right? Could you help us find our missing classmates?"   
"Yes, of course we'll help you look. You should probably get going, though; they might have continued somewhere else," the pink ranger replied, breathing a sigh of relief as Bulk nodded.  
"Come on, Skull. Let's leave these guys to look here and we'll go search closer to camp. They'd probably try to find their way back as soon as the sun was up." Bulk tugged on Skull's shirt, then gave him a slight shove.  
"Bye rangers, bye pink ranger…" Skull waved as he stumbled forward, then broke into a run with Bulk just barely behind him. They were laughing and yelling as they got further away.  
"We should get back to the cave and then find the campsite. I think they'll suspect something if we don't get back soon," Jason suggested, triggering a race back into the cave.  
"I win!"  
"No fair! You used your super speed!"  
"All's fair in love and war, and _this is war!_ "  
Kimberly tackled Trini through the energy screen, accidentally knocking Alpha over in the process. The robot was carrying a tray of strange rectangles that almost looked like picture frames, and they scattered everywhere.  
"Argh! Sorry!" Trini scrambled up and started to gather the rectangles.  
"Ai-yi-yi! What are you doing?"  
"Sorry, Alpha, I’m a bit over excited about the powers." She handed them back to Alpha, spotting the stylized "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" engraved on the frame part only when the light from Alpha's sensors hit them.  
"I’m glad you've figured out how to use your powers. They will serve you well in the oncoming battle," Zordon announced.  
"Well, it is pretty awesome to have superpowers. You know, I kind of don't mind the thought of fighting anymore." Kimberly raised her fist to the sky, then jumped to launch herself into flight. "I am Super Kim!"  
By now the boys had passed through the gateway, and Jason had to stifle a giggle when he saw what Kim was doing. "Uh… what are you doing?"  
"I'm being a superhero, duh!"  
"Are you trying to be Supergirl or something? Because that's what you look like, except all in pink." Zack snickered, removing his helmet and tucking it under his arm.  
"There are some pink superheroes. Aren't there?" Billy frowned, taking off his helmet and leaning his head against his hand. "Think, Billy, think."  
"Hey, Zack, that's an idea! I could dress up as Supergirl for Halloween and actually fly!"  
"Ahem, rangers, need I remind you that you need to keep your identities a secret? You cannot reveal them to anyone. That means- Kimberly? Please, don’t dress up as Supergirl. Whatever that means." Zordon cut their fun short.  
"Oh, party pooper." Kim groaned and landed on the metallic floor. She twisted her head around to look at her back, imagining a pair of wings sprouting out of her back. "Wish I could have wings. That would be _really_ awesome. Imagine it, cute little pink wings of Aquila!"  
"Aquila? You mean the constellation? Aquila is an eagle, Kimberly. Eagles don't have "cute little pink wings"- that doesn't make any sense," Billy chided, coming out of his thinking trance.  
Trini smiled as she took off her helmet. "Billy's right, Kim. Though it would be pretty awesome. On another matter, how do we get out of these suits? It's getting a bit itchy…"  
Zordon sighed. "I forgot about that. Alpha, give them the morphers."  
Alpha, who had been fiddling with the rectangles, handed one to each ranger. "To morph, you say "It's morphin time!" as a sign that you're ready, then your animal, while holding out your morpher with your coin inside it. To demorph, the phrase is "Power down"."  
"Power down," everyone commanded immediately, relieved to see their suits fade away and be replaced by their regular clothes.  
Jason tucked the morpher and coin into the pocket of his sweatshirt. "How do we get back here? I mean, I don't want to travel to Nevada every time we need to meet here."  
"The Command Center isn't part of the world you know. You could consider it a pocket dimension, I guess. All you need to gain access is your coin, though the morphers make it easier for you by directing the energy into the teleportation gate," Zordon explained. His eyes seemed to wander to the square of darkness through which the five teens had entered the Command Center. "You entered the Command Center through one of these gates. If necessary, though, the gateways can take you anywhere you need to go."  
"So we can teleport right now to our classmates' location instead of walking back?" Trini asked, raising an eyebrow.  
"Indeed," the Eltarian soldier responded,   
"Thanks, Zordon." Jason turned to the teleportation gate they'd entered through and stretched out his hand, holding out the tyrannosaurus coin. The gate they'd entered through fizzled out, and a new one formed in its stead. They could see the campsite in the distance through the gate.  
"How'd you do that?" Alpha enquired excitedly.  
"Pure determination. I'm a determinator, it's what I do." A smirk spread across Jason's face as he walked through the gateway, disappearing in a shower of sparks. Billy followed him, glancing warily at the robot and the hologram before stepping through, then Kimberly, then Zack, and Trini was last to leave.  
"Thank you, Zordon," she said, turning to the Eltarian before she left.  
"What for?" he asked, surprised.  
"Bringing these coins to Earth. Thanks to that, we can protect our world."

"Kimberly! Trini! You're back!" One of the girls who usually hung out with them came racing over, arms outstretched for a hug.  
Kim sidestepped and gave her a light slap on the shoulder. "Come off it, Marlena. It was just a night in a cave. We weren't in any danger."  
Another girl who was standing nearby, her blonde ponytail snapping in the brisk wind, corrected her. "Actually, you were in danger. These clay thingies attacked everyone when we were out looking for you guys, and guess what?"  
"What happened, Kira?" Trini made an attempt at looking intrigued, which was probably convincing enough, because Kira started jumping up and down excitedly.  
"We got rescued by superheroes!"  
"Really?" Jason jumped in, grinning.  
"Ho boy, did we! Bulk and Skull got the whole thing on video!" another girl chimed in, beckoning in the duo's direction.  
"Actually, it was Skull who got the video. I was kind of messing around when the Power Rangers showed up to save our butts," Bulk corrected as he walked over.  
"Wow… you have a video of them?" Zack leaned forward to look at the phone that Bulk was holding, trying to mask his apprehension. There was no way that they could be recognized as the rangers, right? To his relief, the helmets had changed the sounds of their voices just enough so as to not be recognizable. "This is really cool!"  
Kim got up from a backbend to watch the footage. "Hey, Eugene! Looks like someone has a crush on the pink ranger!!!" she teased, making the redhead, who was standing 30 feet away, whirl around in fright before realizing that she meant him.  
"Kim, stop that!"  
Bulk sighed, attempting to slick back his hair with a finger. He failed, and a black strand fell into his face. "Kimberly Hart, when will you understand that Skull has a major crush on you?"  
"I know that, _Farkas_. It's just that I don't reciprocate, so why would I want to let Eugene embarrass himself trying to gain my love? Better to discourage him."  
"Maybe he’ll have a better chance with the pink ranger," Trini suggested, staring Kim in the eye.  
"Trini!" Kim hissed. Zack snickered, then looked away.  
"Ha! You care for him! Don't try to deny it!" Kira giggled, her cheeks flushing crimson. She pulled Marlena and Diane away before Kim, who was known for icy-cold revenge, could explode on them. The tiny gymnast could be a huge ball of fury when she wanted to be.  
Jason watched as Billy joined the group, inadvertently positioning himself next to Kimberly. Billy was the tallest of the five of them, towering above many of their teachers at six-foot two, so seeing him next to the five-foot naught Kim was completely disillusioning.  
"Dear students, please listen for a moment," Ms. Appleby, one of the teachers, announced. "Because of the attack and the separation of the green team, the rest of the trip is hereby cancelled. A bus will be here shortly to pick us up."  
Groans could be heard from all over the campsite. "Let’s gather our stuff and leave this campsite clean for the next group. After all, that's what we'd want to find when we went camping, right?"  
Everyone scattered, packing backpacks and taking down tents. As she packed, Kimberly started feeling something strange in her eyes, but paid it no attention. "I probably got something in my eyes, that's all…" she thought.  
By the time they got on the bus, her vision was so blurry that she almost sat down on top of Zack instead of next to Trini, one row behind. "Oops, sorry!" She winced, then headed up one more row.  
"What's going on, Kim? Are you okay?" Trini grabbed her arm, forcing the pink ranger to look at her.  
Kim mumbled something unintelligible in return, and reached for her eyes. She rubbed, and rubbed, and then finally gave up and pulled her contacts out. Suddenly everything was sharp and clear once again, and she sighed with relief. "Not sure what happened, but I guess the coin improved my eyesight so that I don't need contacts anymore."  
"WHAT?" Zack and Trini both let out some pretty undignified squawks of surprise. "You wear contacts?"  
Jason frowned. "So you're telling me that I've been doing gymnastics alongside you for _eleven years_ without knowing that you needed glasses?"  
"Actually, I was ten when I discovered that I needed glasses, so it's only five years," Kimberly corrected. Stretching, she yawned and curled up in her seat. "Don't wake me up until we're back in Angel Gr…" She hadn't even finished her sentence before she was asleep. Her head drooped onto Trini’s shoulder, making the yellow ranger smile as she recalled the time that she'd had a crush on her. Kim was really cute, though, in her opinion. The way her face was smooshed into the shoulder she was leaning on and the way her hair escaped the barrette that was holding it back made her look like an adorable eight-year-old.  
Billy sat alone with noise-cancelling headphones and listened to TED lectures. Though he tried to concentrate on the lecture, he fell asleep quite fast due not having slept at all the previous night, unlike the other rangers who got at least a couple of hours in. Even so, the noise-cancelling headphones were part of the reason he fell asleep in the first place.   
Jason was reading a book about legendary athletes, but after some time he started nodding off, and Zack listened to songs until he fell asleep.

After three hours of travel Skull's voice was heard over the loudspeakers, making everyone wake with a start. Except for Trini, who was awake anyway. "I sent the video to the California news station, and guess what?"  
Groans were heard all over the bus from students who had been awoken. Billy was the only one who was still asleep; he still had his headphones on. Skull turned on the small TV in the bus and tuned it to the news channel.  
" _Are there true superheroes among us? The Angel Grove High School's tenth grade was on a field trip in Nevada when one of their teams was lost. Thankfully, they reappeared safe and sound, but some of their classmates were attacked while searching for them. They were rescued by a mysterious group of five colorful spandex-wearing heroes who called themselves "Power Rangers." How do we know? One of the students who was attacked, Eugene "Skull" Skullovitch, filmed the entire scene._ " The news reporter, a burly man in desperate need of a haircut, motioned to someone offscreen and the live footage cut to the shaky video of the rangers and the putty attack.   
"Bulk! My name was mentioned on TV!" Skull whispered excitedly as he returned to his seat, attempting to comb through his hair with his hand and failing.  
"I guess there is no turning back now…" Trini whispered, fiddling with a few strands of her hair and weaving them into a complex braid.  
"Yeah, now the whole world knows about the Power Rangers. We can't just quit now." Zack groaned and put his headphones back on, and before long he was dancing in his sleep. Kim was having a tough time trying to stop herself from laughing.  
After a few minutes Kimberly yawned. "Okay, we know that they're after the coins. I'm going to sleep, so only wake me up if there's an attack or if we get home."

The bus screeched to a sudden halt five hours later. They'd stopped once before to get food, and twice to allow a bathroom break, but the five of them were still tired from their tumultuous night and, aside from Zack, hadn't gotten off at any.  
"We're home?" Kim mumbled, half-asleep.  
"No, we’re near Reefside," Trini replied, glancing out the window to check the nearest mileage sign.  
"We still have an hour's drive until Angel Grove! Why did we stop?" Kimberly grumbled, still exhausted.  
"Everyone calm down. I think we may have a flat tire, but that shouldn't take too long to fix, and we will get back on the road soon," Louie, the bus driver, announced over the loudspeaker. He unbuckled and was about to get off the bus, but a couple of putties and a woman in gold armour blocked his way out.   
"Well, actually, all six tires are flat," the woman responded scornfully. "Sit down. I doubt you'll be going anywhere anytime soon." She shoved the frightened bus driver back into his seat, making everyone on the bus take a collective breath. Skull was the only one thinking clearly- he got out his phone right away to record everything, even sending a message to the news channel and starting a YouTube livestream.  
"I am Scorpina, warrior of Antaredia. I am here to find five coins that were stolen from my queen eons ago. I know they are on this bus, so if you give me the coins without a fight, I can promise that nobody will be harmed… too much." The glee on her face was the light of battle, making it clear that she expected a fight and wanted one as well.  
Trini and Kim exchanged mischievous grins, getting ready for a tease-off, pink and yellow ranger-style.  
"Scorpina? Why didn't you go with Stinger? Or Stingerina? Or maybe Stingerella? Those names are so much cooler," Trini joked. Then she looked off to the side, an odd feeling of familiarity tingling through her. “You remind me of someone… Well, I never, you look almost exactly like him! You even have a stinger! It’s just that your sting is gold and not orange- I can’t even!” Trini was starting to freak out. After all, it’s not every day that a person of a race from a tv show that you love shows up in front of you, let alone tries to kill you.  
"Oh, forget about it. We should just call her Scorpi. That's even better," Kim added, a snort of laughter escaping her.   
"Goldi and Scorpi, that's good!" Trini whispered amidst silent laughter, having been distracted from her panicking by Kim’s comment.  
A golden stinger rose up behind Scorpina, trembling and looking ready to sting anyone who moved. It dashed at the girls, only just missing them and burying itself in the seats.  
"Leave them alone!" Jason called out in indignation, standing up and pulling his bō-staff out of his backpack in one smooth move.  
"Fine, I’ll harass someone else," she retorted, pulling a golden sword out of a sheath on her hip and stalking towards him. "How about you? Or maybe… pretty boy over here?"  
She yanked her stinger out of the girls' seat and held both it and her sword just touching Billy's neck. A drop of shimmering venom slid down from the stinger, unnoticed by anyone. "I doubt Mr. Headphones over here would notice if I slit his throat." As though to emphasize her point, she dug slightly deeper into the soft skin, making the slice well up with blood.  
"DON’T TOUCH MY FRIENDS!!!" Jason yelled furiously, extending his bō-staff and, catching her by surprise, knocking her back into the aisle.  
"Please, students, calm down. What do you need, Miss?" Ms. Appleby asked worriedly.  
"My queen's coins!!"   
"Alright… Let me talk to my students. I promise, we’ll find you these coins. Just don’t hurt anyone."  
"But that makes it less fun," Scorpina growled, but she backed away down the aisle, heading towards the driver.  
"Students, do you know anything of these coins? If so, can you please give her them so we can continue on our way in safety?" the teacher inquired. No one answered.   
"Well, that didn't work." Scorpina sneered as she grabbed Louie by the collar. "Now I’m going to kill one person for every hour that I don’t get the coins. And I'll start with this guy, just to show you that you never cross the mighty Scorpina!" she announced, her stinger poised to strike. It hit Louie's shoulder and knocked him back onto his seat. "Now, where are my queen’s coins?!"  
Jason sighed. "I know where the coins are."  
"What are you doing? We can't just give her our coins!" Zack hissed as the red ranger got out of his seat.  
"I know, but we can’t morph because it would reveal our identities, and we can’t let her hurt anyone else, so I’m improvising," Jason whispered back.  
"Great. Finally someone sees sense!" Scorpina laughed, a sinister sound that made every person on the bus shiver.  
"They're in my bag. It’s in the baggage compartment, so I can only give it to you if you let me get out," Jason countered, pointing at the putties still blocking the door.  
"Let him pass!" Scorpina commanded, following him with her sword raised and ready in case he tried something.

"Damn, I ran out of battery…" Skull muttered exasperatedly, banging his fist on his knee.  
"Don’t worry, you wouldn’t be able to get any footage of what's going on out there anyway," Bulk attempted to reassure him.  
"So where is the bag?"  
"Here. You need to open it from the bus."  
"Why didn’t you mention that?!!" she screamed, punching the side of the bus and making it tremble. "How do I open it??"   
"I have no idea, and you knocked out the driver, so…."  
Out of nowhere a white energy slash hit Scorpina, knocking her to the asphalt. A white-clad figure was racing towards them, wielding a tiger-handled sword that seemed to have a mind of its own. Scorpina wrapped her stinger around the sword, attempting to disarm the figure, but the sword refused to move, actually using the scorpion warrior's own energy to fling her off the road. The person and sword followed her, prompting the putties to chase after them.  
"That was weird." Jason returned to the bus, his first instinct to check that the blue ranger was okay. Trini was holding a wad of tissues to the cut, trying to stop the blood.  
"I called 9-1-1," Ms. Appleby told them as she walked over.  
After a few moments a man in a navy blue polo shirt and khaki shorts got on the bus, carrying a red duffle bag over his shoulder. "I heard on the radio that this bus was being held hostage by a scorpion warrior, or something like that. I'm a doctor. Do you need any medical help?"  
"Yes, please!" Kim called out. "She injured a friend of ours with her sword, and stung the bus driver."  
The man walked over, pulling latex gloves from his bag and putting them on. He shook Billy gently. "Hey, wake up if you don't want to die!"  
Zack shrugged. "He stayed asleep throughout the whole thing. When he’s out, he’s out like a light."  
"So it’s not blood loss?" The man let out an audible sigh of relief. But he continued to shake Billy anyway. "Wake up, kiddo. You need to get to the hospital."  
After a few more attempts, the blue ranger woke up. His black hair flopped upside down as he sat up, freezing when he realized that Trini was pressing against his throat with a tissue. "What did I tell you about contact?"  
"I know, but it was this or let you bleed out. I have a feeling you'd rather continue living," Trini replied, reaching for a gauze pad.  
"Bleed out? What happened when I was asleep?" Realization dawned on him. "We were attacked, weren't we?" He didn't need an answer- everyone's grim faces and Jason squeezing his bō-staff like he wanted to strangle it were answer enough.  
"Let me see the cut," the doctor said, moving Trini's hand gently. "You did a great job stopping the bleeding. He should probably come back with me though; it's a neck wound, and we can't let it get infected."   
"Thank you, Doctor-"  
"Oliver. Frank Oliver." He turned and walked over to the bus driver, Louie, who was seriously wounded. Scorpina's stinger had somehow hit one of his lungs, and he was barely breathing. Dr. Oliver injected a painkiller, then bound the man's chest with a heavy roll of gauze.  
Everyone attempted to look out the windows when helicopters could be heard approaching. Then they realized that it's not that easy to look at something that's above them from a bus window.  
"Well, I guess they're here. Son, is there any chance you could walk over to the helicopter on your own? I need to help this guy over here." Dr. Oliver advanced a few steps down to the road, supporting the unconscious driver until they were out of the bus and one of the medics could help.  
He hadn't gone five steps, though, when Trini, Kimberly, Jason and Zack burst out of the bus, supporting Billy. "We're coming too. If you take our friend, you're taking us as well."  
"Fine, I guess there's enough room in the helicopter for five." Dr. Oliver swung himself up into one of the helicopters, the one that held Louie, and watched as the five teens bickered good-naturedly while getting onto the other. A red flash caught the corner of his eye, and he directed his gaze at Jason. The teen with the red hoodie and bō-staff seemed kind of familiar, or at least the steely determination in his eyes did- it was the same flint that he saw in his own eyes every morning as he determined to save more people that day.  
The rest of the class got on a larger helicopter that arrived several minutes later, meant for rescue and not for medical transport. After that, when the police had arrived, the civilian helicopter took off, following the medical ones that had taken off a couple of minutes earlier.

The helicopters arrived at the hospital just ten minutes after they’d taken off, and Dr. Oliver rushed Louie to the OR, as his condition had worsened. Another doctor came to check on Billy, who was sitting on the floor, trembling in shock. She took him into a room off the hall they were in, and the rest of the teens followed, to her chagrin.  
"You have to stay outside. We can’t afford to let anyone else in, particularly with the type of injury your friend has." The doctor slammed the door in their faces and crouched to look at the trembling boy who had simply sat down in the center of the room. "Hello, Billy. I’m Dr. Taiga, one of Dr. Oliver’s colleagues, and I’m going to have a look at what happened to you, if that’s okay."  
He didn't answer.  
Dr. Taiga reached out to touch him, but, out of nowhere, his hand flew up and knocked her away.

Billy was having a nightmare. A waking nightmare. He was morphed, wielding his lance against a figure who appeared to also be a ranger- albeit one he'd never seen. He guessed that the other ranger was using one of the missing coins, or- as he realized when he spotted the oddness of the coin in the stranger's belt- two of them.  
"How dare you!" he heard himself snarl, attempting to gain a hit on the other ranger. "Tommy, you killed my friends!"  
But the other ranger- Tommy- merely laughed as he parried the blue ranger's blows, a spine-chilling laugh that made Billy lose his focus for a second. "I am not Tommy, William Cranston. I am so much more than that… I am Lord Drakkon. I am the future."  
Thankfully, his body somehow ignored Drakkon's words. Maybe it wasn't his body- for all he knew, this was his future self. "You will never rule, _Tommy_. You're just Rita's pawn- you'll never win!" Billy's other self spat as he deflected Drakkon's sword with his lance.  
"You're right, Billy, as always. As Rita's pawn I will never rule. But once she's gone…" The dagger swinging up from below took Billy by surprise, but not his other self. He sidestepped with the grace of a practiced warrior.  
"Curse you, _Tommy Oliver!_ I curse you to the ends of the earth! May your own blade be your undoing!" Now Billy was shouting, and Frank Oliver was standing at the entrance to the room, open-mouthed.  
"Oh, Frank. Your kid’s name is Tomi, right?" Dr. Taiga winced as she realized what it must sound like to her colleague.   
"Dana, I don't get it. How does he know that name? And why does he hate Tomi so much?" Dr. Oliver walked out of the room, trying to keep his tangled emotions under control, and nearly tripped over a pair of kids, a boy and a girl, who were rushing headlong down the hallway.  
"Hi kiddos." Frank almost forgot about what just happened as he bent to hug his children.  
"How was school? Where are your sisters?" Dana asked, shutting the door behind her as she left the room Billy was in.  
"School was great. They dropped us here and continued to their swimming and fencing lessons- you know them and their weird passion for sports," the girl said, rolling her eyes.  
"Erica! Don’t underestimate your sisters' hobbies! They deserve a chance to chase after their dreams! Dreams about sports can be fun- I used to be obsessed with WWE."  
"Well, at least they have normal dreams that they can pursue, not like Joe’s dream," she retorted, elbowing her twin.  
"Your brother can dream."  
"Yeah! And I’m _so_ going to be a space cop who fights aliens!" the boy told them with a completely straight face.  
"Joe! How many times do I need to tell you this? Aliens don’t exist!"  
"They do!"  
"They don't!"  
"Do!"  
"Don't!"  
"They do! They do! They do!"  
"Kids, please stop bickering." Dr. Oliver sighed, as if they'd been through this many times before, though a little smile hid in the corner of his mouth. Like he knew something that he wasn't saying.

"Holy f… where am I?!?"  
Dr. Oliver and Dr. Taiga dashed back into the room, barely dodging Billy, who was now on his feet and sending punches flying in every direction. Dr. Taiga abruptly reversed direction and ran out of the room, pausing only to whisper one word to her colleague: "Hallucination."  
Dr. Oliver nodded, then dashed in and attempted to restrain the thrashing teenager. He couldn't help but thank fate for his WWE obsession as a kid as he tackled Billy to the floor, pinning his arms in place. After a few minutes, Dr. Taiga returned holding a syringe, which she then injected into Billy, making him fall asleep.  
"We should take a sample of his blood, try to see what the hallucinogen is," Dr. Oliver instructed, bending over the unconscious teen with brisk efficiency.  
Dr. Taiga seemed skeptical as she folded her arms. "I don't know… The others claim that they were attacked by some sort of scorpion woman, and they don't strike me as liars, so it's entirely possible that this is nothing we've ever seen before."  
"You might be right... That’s exactly why I’ll research this on my own. I won't stop until I've figured out a cure. Have the kids bring me coffee, will you?"

The Angel Grove High students were in the waiting room. Most of the students were chatting quietly, and occasionally a voice or two were raised in anger. Skull and Bulk, on the other hand, were talking to a bunch of reporters. Jason, Trini, Kim and Zack, though, simply sat there in silence. All of them were gripping their coins tightly like they were lucky charms.   
"I just finished calling your parents. They’re on their way," Ms. Appleby announced. "I’m sorry our trip ended up that badly, but you will get the next two days off to rest, I’ll see you guys on Monday back at school and you'll all need to meet with Cassidy Devin, the school counselor, and talk about what happened."   
The students mumbled and nodded. Their teacher was honestly quite surprised by this response, as she was expecting resistance from the students, but it appeared that they all were too exhausted to protest.   
"What if he dies?" Trini blurted out suddenly. She pulled on a lock of her hair, and then started sobbing.  
"Don’t worry, Trini, he isn't going to die. Billy's a tough guy. He's not going to let anyone put him down that easily," Zack whispered, trying to reassure her.  
"She's going to pay for that! I’m going to kill her!" Jason slammed his fist on the low table in front of him. It hurt more than he'd have liked to admit, meaning it was bloody _painful_. All of his classmates stared at him, making him smile awkwardly and lower his head.  
"This is becoming far more dangerous than we ever imagined. We literally could have died…" Kim's words trailed off, and she buried her face in Jason's shoulder. "I hate him! Why'd he have to go and almost die?"  
"We could have died today regardless of whether we were rangers or not. She chose Billy randomly. At least as rangers, we have the power to protect ourselves and our friends and family. We should train before the next fight," Jason said, reaching for his backpack.  
"Not now!"

"Where's Dr. O?" a voice could be heard asking. A brown-haired girl who looked to be about eight was pestering a nurse, and a boy of the same age was standing next to her with a cup of coffee.  
"Probably with a patient." The nurse rolled her eyes- she was used to Oliver’s kids by now because they were there a _lot_.   
Just then Dr. Taiga arrived. "How’s Billy?! Can we see him?" Jason asked, jumping up from his chair immediately.  
"He needs to rest," she responded.  
"Dr. T, where's Dad?" The girl ran over, deciding that the doctor was a better target than the nurse.  
"If you're here, then where's Dr. Oliver?" Trini asked, bewildered. She stood up, wiping tears away from her face, and rushed to the bathrooms.  
"Your friend is sleeping right now. Dr. Oliver took his blood to the lab, to test for any possible hallucinogens that may be causing visions. Erica, don't pester me." She grabbed the coffee from the boy and walked away, calling "Thanks for the coffee, Joe!" over her shoulder.  
"Great, that means we're stuck here for the next few hours!" Erica groaned and plopped down on the empty chair that Trini had been sitting on before. Joe seated himself next to her, in the chair that happened to be Jason's.  
"Um… I sat there…" Trini muttered as she returned from the bathroom.  
"Well, find another place to sit," Erica spat, folding her arms. "Why do our stupid sisters have to go to training instead of hanging out with us?!"   
"Mom will come pick us up later." Joe tried to calm down his sister, to no avail.  
"Yeah, in eternity," Erica retorted, smacking her twin on the cheek.  
"Hey! You know that's not allowed!"  
"Well I don’t care! Be a tattletale if you want!"   
"Maybe I will!"  
"Fine!"  
"Fine!"  
The twins got up and stormed off in opposite directions as the teens watched, amazed by their audacity. "They remind me of my little brother, Zach… they have the same level of chutzpah," Jason whispered in amusement.  
"Wait, since when does your little brother use that nickname?" Zack's baffled expression was extremely funny to the girls, so much so that Kim's head fell into his lap and then got stuck between his legs.  
"Nice view from down here!" She attempted to hold back her laughter as she extracted herself back to her chair, but Jason's face set her off again and she collapsed in a fit of giggles.  
Zack went completely red. "Sorry?"  
Trini snorted, setting Kim off again, but they were all interrupted by the arrival of Billy's parents.  
"Where is my son?!" A tall woman in a sleek blue suit ran in, heading straight to the gray-haired teacher. Her hair was tousled from the wind under her blue kerchief, suggesting that she'd hurried over as soon as she'd heard what had happened.  
"We want to see him right away!" Billy's dad- because that's the only person it could be, due to his similarities in appearance to his son- joined in, not seeming to care about his grease-covered overalls or the screwdrivers that were sticking out of his shirt pocket.  
"Mom! Dad! Wait up!" A dark-haired boy who seemed to be in his late teens or early twenties barged through the doors, almost bent double under a large backpack and panting for breath.  
"I'll ask for you. They rushed him to the ER as soon as the helicopters landed, according to Jason Scott," Ms. Appleby admitted, walking over to the nurses' station and saying a few words. The nurse spoke into an earpiece, and a few minutes later Dr. Taiga emerged through the door. "This is his doctor."  
"You're Billy Cranston's parents?" she asked the three people who were standing there.  
"Of course we are!" Mrs. Cranston replied indignantly.  
"Billy is sleeping at present, so you can see him when he wakes up. He ran afoul of some sort of attack, and he was hallucinating when I injected him with sedatives, but Dr. Oliver is in the lab right now trying to figure out what the hallucinogen is."  
"Hallucinations? What the hell happened? I want to see that doctor right now!" Mr. Cranston yelled, his olive-toned skin turning red.  
"Fine, follow me." Dr. Taiga turned and started walking towards the doors.  
"Hey, we're coming too!" Jason and the others were standing a few feet away, arms crossed.  
"Who are you?"  
"We’re his friends," Trini responded. "And you are?"  
The Cranstons exchanged glances full of meaning before the teen told them "I'm David, Billy's older brother."  
"Okay… that's new," Billy’s father thought aloud. "Since when does Billy have friends at school?"  
"Since yesterday."  
"Are you coming to the labs or not?" Dr. Taiga asked, annoyed. The Cranston family and the teens followed her as she walked through the revolving door into the inner halls of the hospital.

When they got to the lab only Erica was there.  
"Erica, where's your dad?" Dr. Taiga asked, her brow furrowing as she looked around. The lab showed no sign of having been used in the past hour.  
"I’m supposed to ask _you_ that," Erica countered. "I've been looking for him for the past hour!"  
"He was supposed to be here. I don’t get it… Where could he have gone?"  
"I’m here. I just went to look up the hallucinogen on the web to see if it exists on Earth and not some kind of alien thing that we've never seen before. Thankfully, it’s something we are familiar with. Besides, I prefer the lab on the other side of the building. It's quieter." Dr. Oliver walked up, waving a small vial as he addressed his colleague. "I suppose you’re Billy’s family? It’s nice to meet you." The doctor shook their hands, slipping the vial into his pocket.  
"You’re the doctor who was the first responder, right? Thanks for saving my little brother," David replied.  
"Yes, I am. Now, you should go to the waiting room- I’ll call you when he’s awake. I’m going to give him the antidote to the hallucinogen," Dr. Oliver turned to go, then realized that his daughter was there as well. "Erica, you’re not to stay here. Go with them." With that he turned and walked off.

When they got back to the waiting room, they realized that it was much fuller than it had been. Joe was playing with another boy, who seemed to be around the same age as him and had the same shaggy strawberry-blond hair as Jason. Next to them stood a black-haired woman with a chic little hat.  
"Jason, there you are!" the woman called, opening her arms for a hug. "I was so worried."  
"Guys!" Jason yelled, running up to his mother and hugging her tightly. She was a petite woman, and she barely hit Jason's shoulder, but she was a very strong hugger.  
A cop with brown hair and a cup of coffee entered the room, followed by Marlena and her parents. "She can go. Who’s next?" the cop asked, scanning the room. "I see that the mother of one of the boys who was in the cave is here. Great, you’re next."  
"Wait! What’s going on here? Who are you?" Jason glanced warily at the police officer, confused.  
"The police have decided to talk with the students about what happened, as they were the only ones to directly witness what happened. You and your mom should go with Officer McKnight, Jason. He’ll be discussing the events of the past 24 hours with you," Ms. Appleby explained, then nodded to Marlena and her parents. "Goodbye Marlena, I’ll see you next week."  
Jason peeked at his friends out of the corner of his eye, and everyone looked apprehensive- and Zack appeared to be downright scared. The black ranger noticed the red ranger looking in his direction, then shook his head and mouthed "Don’t tell him about the coins."  
"Zach, we’ll be back soon. It’s alright…" Jason pulled Zach’s baseball cap off and ruffled his little brother’s hair, holding the hat teasingly out of reach.  
"Oi! Jason! Give that back!" Zach yelled, jumping up and grabbing the hat out of his brother’s hand. "Besides, I’ll be fine. I have my new friend Joe to play with."  
"Great, my brother found a new friend." Erica groaned, rolling her eyes and checking the time on her watch.  
"Ignore Erica. She thinks that because she’s older than me by five minutes she can boss me around."  
"I know how it is- I have five sisters. Jason is my only brother, and he’s out of the house seventy-five percent of the time."  
"Five? Wow, that’s a lot. I only have three sisters," Joe marveled.  
"You should see how the house is during family reunions!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... Reference-heavy chapter, did you notice? Well, here's the most obscure one. The name Taiga, used as a surname here, is actually the personal name of Taiga Hanaya from Kamen Rider Ex-Aid. Let's see if you can find the rest- the first one to find all of them gets chapter 3 dedicated to them!  
> With love from SpringStar2004 and greenmoon830!


	3. Family Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir does not belong to us. It belongs to Thomas Astruc and the Zagtoons team. We simply wanted the fanfic to happen in a world that is very similar to ours.

Jason and his mom followed Officer McKnight until they reached an empty room. "Have a seat." He pointed at the chairs that were standing in front of the desk. "My name is Officer James McKnight, and I’m from the special investigations department of the Reefside police. I was selected to investigate the trip and the attack, but the students who were here before weren’t very clear about what happened. I’d like you to tell me everything that happened since you got lost, and because I’m recording this, please mention your names first."  
"I’m Sarah Scott, Jason’s mother."  
" I’m Jason Scott. Honestly, nothing really happened. We just got lost, the compass broke because I tripped over a rock, and we spent the night in a cave because it was too dark to walk outside. In the morning we found our way back to the camp, and then we found out about the attacks. That's everything that happened, I swear."  
"Why didn’t you call for help?" Officer McKnight asked, rubbing his forehead as though he was annoyed.  
"It was my decision. I didn’t want to navigate at night, and besides, the walkie talkie had run out of battery hours before, and we had no bars on our phones, so we found a cave and went to sleep."  
"You made the right call, _zeeskeit_ ," Sarah said, placing her hand on his shoulder. Jason side-eyed her.  
"And you weren't attacked at all during the night?"  
"Nope. Peaceful night. It's just really hard to sleep on a stone floor, which was why Billy was asleep on the bus."  
"Your friends were in an area of the cave that you couldn't hear them from?"  
"What? I had no idea that they were looking for us. We woke up, found our way back, and only discovered that they'd been attacked when we got back. We'd assumed that our classmates were looking for us, but we didn’t run into them."  
"How did you get back to the campsite without a compass?"  
"Um… Luck, I guess? We still had the map and everyone remembered that the sun rises in the east. We decided to take matters into our own hands, since we didn’t want to just sit around waiting to be found."  
"Tell me what happened on the bus with the scorpion lady. Your teacher told me that you had the most contact with her."  
"She tried to attack my friends, Trini and Kim, so I told her to back off. I had my bō-staff with me, like I always do, so I tried to protect them, but then she went for Billy and I couldn’t stop her!" Jason exclaimed in frustration, trying hard to hold back his tears.  
"It’s not your fault, _zeeskeit_. It’s not your job to save the world."  
"Your mom is right about that, Jason. It’s our job to save the world, not the civilians’, and especially not the job of a teenage martial artist. We should have been there sooner."   
Jason wasn’t convinced, but he decided not to argue as he buried his face into his mom’s shoulder. After all, his job as a ranger was to protect others. He should have morphed and the consequences be damned.  
"She was looking for some sort of coins, right? Why on earth did you tell her that you’d found them? Why did you go with her outside the bus?"  
"Wait a minute! You did _what_ now?" Sarah was shocked. She knew her son could be reckless when it came to protecting his friends, but to confront someone that dangerous alone?  
"I was trying to make sure she wouldn't hurt anyone else, so I told her that I'd found the coins she was looking for and that they were in my duffle in the bus storage, and that managed to draw her outside."  
"You know what these coins are? Was that a lie or did you actually find them?"  
"I lied to her. I have no idea what coins she was talking about."  
"How weren't you hurt when she discovered that you were lying?"  
"I have no idea. I was saved by someone dressed in white, but I couldn’t see him very well."  
"Alright, I think that's enough." Officer McKnight pressed the button of the recorder and held out a hand to Jason. "Thank you. You may leave now."  
"Good. Goodbye." Jason ignored the proffered hand and walked out of the room with his head high.  
"Thank you, Officer McKnight. I apologize for my son's rudeness, he isn't usually like this," Sarah admitted as she followed her son out into the hall. The sound of her voice admonishing her son made him smile.

When Jason and his mother made it back to the waiting room, they found Skull showing Zach, Erica and Joe the video he'd taken of the rangers.  
"Wow, this is _sweet!_ " Joe called excitedly, grinning so widely that his face was basically split in half.  
"My favorite is the red! I think I’ll dress up as him for Halloween," Zach replied, then noticed his mom's return. "Can I do that?" He ran towards her and gave her a hug.  
"Sure, _zeeskeit_ ," she answered, wrapping Zach in a bear hug. Jason stared at his younger brother, then looked in his friends' direction with a big dopey grin that made them burst into laughter. Every time they thought they'd gotten over it, Zack or Kim would choke out a funny line and they'd all be off again, but they were finally brought back down to earth by that fact of life, Erica Oliver.  
"Their colors are lame! Why isn't there a hero in green or white?" Erica asked.  
"Why do you even care? It’s not like you could dress up as the green ranger! The green ranger would probably be a boy and not a girl!" Joe said scornfully.  
"Not true! Girls can wear green!! There could be a female green ranger!" Erica retorted exasperatedly.  
"It’s like having a male pink ranger! It’s ridiculous!" Joe responded.  
"Boys can wear pink! There could be a male pink ranger!"   
"No they don't!"  
"There should be an equal number of boys and girls! I bet you that the next ranger will be a female green ranger!"  
"Fine! You owe me five dollars if you’re wrong!"  
"Hell, there should be green, purple and white rangers and also maybe gold, silver, orange and brown! Six boys and six girls, that's what a team should be!"  
Frank had just entered the waiting room to alert the waiting teens that Billy had been given the antidote and that he'd probably wake up soon, and he stared, wide-eyed, at his daughter. The four rangers also stared at her. Nobody was laughing anymore. Could it be that she had just mentioned all the missing coins? Or was the number she'd chosen completely arbitrary?  
"That's it! I’m calling your mother!" Frank pulled his phone out and walked to the corner, then realized that he'd forgotten to let the teens know the news. "Oh, and guys? I gave your friend the antidote. He should be waking up soon."  
David sprang up from his seat, his hair- longer than Billy's- falling in his eyes. He swept it back with a hasty gesture. "When can I see him?"  
Dr. Oliver was already on the phone, though, and he didn't reply.

"Who’s next? Have the parents of any of the other kids from the green team arrived?"  
"Yes. I’m Trini’s mother." An elegant hispanic woman in a crisp suit walked over to Trini, who turned around to give her a hug. "I’m glad to see that you're not investigating minors without their parents, Officer."  
"Very well, you can go next. Mrs. Scott, you’re welcome to leave with your son," Officer McKnight said as he entered through the doorway.  
"Wait up!" Jason turned to the officer, his arms crossed. "I’m not leaving this place until I know Billy is awake and alright! I’m sure Trini and the others agree with me, so how about you talk to one of the other kids in our class? They’ll talk to you after we know that Billy is awake." He was honestly hoping to get a chance to coordinate their stories so that the police wouldn’t suspect them.  
"Since when are the four of you that close to him?" Kira queried, squinting in suspicion.  
"Since yesterday. Sleeping overnight in a cave together can be quite a bonding experience," Kimberly retorted, popping a hand on her hip and stepping up to stare the blonde girl down.  
Billy’s parents shared a knowing look, smiling.  
"Can I go before Trini if she’s going to stay here?" Another girl waved from the other side of the room, her blue and green-streaked dreadlocks shaking with the motion. Her dad was standing behind her, fiddling with a Rubik’s Cube.  
"Yes! I’m staying right here until we know that Billy's alright. Jason's right about that. Angela should go before me, I know she wants to go home," Trini said, nodding to the pretty black girl.  
"Great! So it's settled- I’m going next." Angela grabbed her father's arm, while he was still focused on the cube, and dragged him across the room.  
"Angela! You don’t need to pull me!" her father protested as his voice faded down the hallway.  
"So what did he ask? Anything that hinted at anything strange?" Zack whispered as Jason returned to where they'd been sitting.  
"You told him that we had a peaceful night?" Kim confirmed.  
"He asked if we were attacked and if I'd lied to her about the coins," Jason replied, taking off his cap for a moment and ruffling his hair. "Of course, we were not attacked and we never found any coins. We had a quiet night, and the only problem was that sleeping on stones is not comfortable at all." He winked at his friends as he put his hat back on.  
"Great, thanks for letting me know. That's exactly what I'm going to tell the cop when he questions me." Trini leaned back against the seat and pulled her headphones out of her backpack. "Let me know when something happens."

"Billy is awake if you want to see him." Dr. Taiga appeared in the doorway, carrying a clipboard and beckoning with her free hand.  
David let out a loud woot, and he and the four teens raced towards the doctor, anticipating for her to direct them to Billy’s room, but she held up her hand. "Only family for now," she stated, and the Cranstons followed her out of the waiting room.  
"Oh come on!" Kim groaned as she flopped back into her seat.  
"Gee, girl, calm down. It's just Billy- you know, the weirdo of the class?" Diane narrowed her eyes at the tiny gymnast, and Kira was nodding along, her gaze radiating suspicion as it locked on Kim's eyes.  
"You know girl, you take everything too much to your hart. Get it? Hart? Heart?" The blonde girl snickered, and the pink ranger had had enough.  
"Can you _please_ stop being jerks for ten seconds?" Kim snapped, gazing in indignant surprise at her friends. She'd never seen them acting like this before. "You know, if you'd actually get to know him, maybe you'd find someone worth knowing?"  
"Who’s next?" Officer McKnight was back, with Angela tagging along while still dragging her father with her. They passed Ms. Appleby without saying a word, and the gaze Angela shot at Kimberly looked sympathetic and almost apologetic, as though she had heard it all.  
"I’ll go!" Kira's fingers flew on the screen of her phone, and, a few minutes later, her mother entered the lobby, the steam from a cup of tea wafting around her hands. As the blonde girl walked over to her mother, she sent a look Kim's way that seemed to say "Whatever you think, this isn't over yet."

After another quarter hour of waiting- it was already evening by now, Zack realized as he glanced at his watch- Dr. Taiga reappeared in the doorway. "I think it would be okay to let some friends in now."   
All four teens sprang up, eyes shining with excitement. "Great, let’s go!" Jason called, making a beeline for the door, and his friends followed suit.

When the four of them made it to Billy’s room, the blue ranger was half awake and lying on a cot. His parents were sitting on chairs next to his cot, and David was basically snuggled up to his brother before he spotted them and jolted upright. "Hey Billy, your friends are here to check on you. They refused to leave until they knew that you were okay." Dr. Taiga poked her head around the doorframe, with the others forming a Scooby-stack just below her.  
When Billy spotted the other four rangers, he freaked. Hell, "freaked" was too gentle a word. He went completely ballistic. "Wait! What? No! No! I don’t have friends!" Billy shook his head so fast that his hair whipped David's face, then cupped his face in his hands. "Get them away from me!"  
"Oi! Cranston! Why d'you say that?" Kim stalked over and slapped him in the face, making the older Cranstons flinch.  
"Yeah, little bro, I thought the situation had changed." David grabbed Billy's hand, but he pulled himself free with a strength David had never known his little brother possessed.  
"Just tell them to get out! Out! Out! Out!" Billy screamed, flinging his blanket over his face and lying down on the cot. "I'm not here, okay? I'm. Not. _Hereeee!!!"_  
Everyone stared at Billy as Dr. Taiga took a sample of his blood again. "It could be because of the hallucinogen from before. Maybe he still needs more time," she said by way of explanation. "I'd get out of here though, if I were you."  
They beat a hasty retreat to the hallway. "We fought freaking _monsters_ to get to this point. Zordon better have some answers!" Zack snarled, pulling out his phone and then realizing that they had no way to contact Zordon or Alpha. Even Alpha, grumpy robot though he may be, would be better than nothing at this point.  
"It _would_ be a good idea to ask the big Z about this," Kimberly said, scanning the hallway before ducking into an empty room.  
Jason followed her, beckoning to the others as he pulled out his coin and attempted to create a portal gate. "Huh, that's weird. It’s not working."  
"Maybe Zordon blocked us out after we messed up on the bus and we can’t go back!" Kim started to panic, grabbing her hair clip from where it was holding back her bangs and staring at it as though it were the answer to all her problems.  
Trini appeared next to them in a blur of brown. "Well, we still have our powers. Besides, Zordon said the coins had bonded to us, so I don’t think he can do that."   
"Maybe it just doesn't work from inside of a building. We might want to try this outside," Zack suggested as he walked through the door, surprisingly calm.  
"But we can’t do that now, our parents will suspect that something's up!" Jason groaned, walking over to the door and banging his head on it.  
"Let’s just go back to the waiting room. When we get home, we'll try again..." Kim's words trailed off as she clutched the clip even harder.  
"Meanwhile, we can ask Dr. Oliver about Billy. I'm getting the impression that he knows what's going on better than Dr. Taiga," Trini suggested, dashing for the door. Zack grinned and followed her.

Very few people were in the room by the time the four rangers found their way back. Most of the students were already gone. A minute or so later, one of their classmates- a guy named Drew- and his father returned to the room with Officer McKnight in tow.  
"Mi hija, can we please go with the officer now if you’ve seen your friend?" Mrs. Reyes, who had walked up to her daughter and given her a huge hug _again_ , spun her daughter around to face the cop, who looked practically dead on his feet.  
Trini glanced at her friends over her shoulder, blushing furiously, and they shrugged. "Por supuesto, Mamá."  
Jason and Zack dashed over to the three kids, laughing as they tripped over each other and almost fell on their faces. "Hey Joe, hey Erica- where’s your dad?" Jason inquired playfully as he struggled up from where he was tangled with Zack, only to sit back down.  
"I don’t know. He’s probably still on the phone with Mom, but it’s taking him way too long! I want to go already!" Erica complained, grabbing the tablet they’d been watching Miraculous on and crossing her arms angrily.  
Zach smiled and grabbed the tablet back, hitting play and letting the strains of the opening theme ring out. "She’s just mad because she’s not a superhero. Right, Joe?"  
The brown-haired eight-year-old snickered. "Yeah, Erica wants to be a power ranger." Erica was about to retort something, but he placed his hand over her mouth. "Don’t deny it."

About twenty minutes later- they could tell because they were nearly done with the episode- Dr. Oliver returned. He looked like he’d aged several years in the past few hours.  
"Dad! Finally! Where’s Mom?" Erica jumped up, accidentally drowning out Thomas Astruc’s lines with her yell, and ran at him. He caught her and swung her up, flopping her over his shoulder like she weighed no more than a rag doll. "Soon, hon."  
Zack and Jason got up, half-annoyed that they couldn’t finish the episode, and followed Erica. Kim joined them a few moments later,   
"Can we talk with you for a moment?" Jason asked quietly.  
"Sure. Erica, get _down_!" His daughter, who was clinging to his shoulder, groaned at her father's words but obliged.  
"Billy acted really weird when we went to visit him. Dr. Taiga said it’s because of the hallucinogen, but you cured it, didn't you?" Kim narrowed her eyes when Dr. Oliver let his gaze drop.  
"I did. Maybe it’s just some side effects acting up or something. Maybe he saw you guys in the hallucination, so when you came into his room what he saw came flooding back. Or maybe he's still traumatized from the event and you triggered the memories of it. Either way, I think you should give him some space. Maybe talk to him at school." He spun around to face the door just as a woman with short brown hair entered through it.   
"Mom! Finally!" Erica screamed as she ran up to her mother, making everyone wince.  
"Now if you’ll excuse me…" Frank walked over to his wife and gave her a quick kiss. "Hey Emma."  
"Joe! I see you've found a new friend, but we need to go home. I've got dinner on the stove and Kat and Tomi are already there," Emma Oliver called out.  
"Awww, come on! I was having so much fun with Zach!" Joe moaned.  
"Me too!" Zach complained, peering out of the corner of his eye at his older brother. Jason looked worried.  
"Just come already!"  
"Erica, be nice to your brother!" her father scolded.  
"Bye Joe... Maybe one day we'll see each other again."  
"Bye Zach! Maybe we’ll move to Angel Grove and we'll meet there! Either way, may the Power Rangers protect you."  
"And you."  
"That is so not going to happen!" Erica laughed scornfully, deftly dodging a punch directed her way by Joe as he ran over.  
"Kids… Really?" Emma sighed as she led her family outside. "You'd think they'd know better than to fight, even when Tomi's not around."

Trini ran back into the waiting room, looking completely stressed out, with her mother and Officer McKnight close behind. "What did I miss?"  
"We should give Billy some space."  
Frank returned to the hospital several minutes later, wearing a coat and a warm hat despite the relative warmth of the May night. "Guys, it's late. You should probably start heading home. You're obviously exhausted." The four rangers glanced around, finding themselves and their parents to be the last of their class at the hospital, aside from their teacher. "To be honest, so am I."  
"Niñas, por favor, can we go?" Mrs. Reyes asked.  
"Si, Mamá, claro."  
"¿Puedo ir contigo?" Everyone looked at Kim awkwardly, and she shrugged. "What? You know that my parents are Mexican."  
"That doesn't explain why you can speak Spanish with a perfect accent!" Trini teased with a wide grin, switching her long black hair from one shoulder to the other.  
"¡Oh, está prendido!" Kim started chasing Trini around, making everyone facepalm. Mrs. Reyes, who was obviously used to this, merely shook her head and muttered something in Spanish.  
"Ms. Appleby, would you like to come with us? We have plenty of room in the van," Sarah asked, ignoring her sons' frantic headshaking   
"I would love to. Thank you, Mrs. Scott. You're a lifesaver."

"Jason, you never told us… how did you end up in the cave?"  
"Yeah, tell me! Tell me!"  
"Zack, do you want to take the lead on this one?"  
"Uh, I wasn't there…"  
Jason snickered. "I meant Zack my friend, not my little brother."  
"Okay… wait. Does that mean I'm not your friend?"  
"What?"  
Zack sighed as he started recounting the way they'd found the cave. "We had been walking for about twenty minutes. Jason had broken the compass by accident, and we were tired, so we decided to look for somewhere to rest. This boulder caught our attention because of the dark silhouette behind it, which we guessed was a cave, so we snuck through the opening- Billy's pants got caught on the stones in the wall, it was hilarious- and we just ate and went to sleep."  
Jason shrugged and jumped into the deep end. "Apparently Billy has an alarm on his watch that's set for four thirty a.m., because I woke up to pandemonium. Trini had tripped over her blanket, Billy was arguing with Kim, and Zack here slept through it all, somehow."

"Trini, hija mía, ¿cómo te sientes?"  
"Me siento bien, mamá."  
"Apuesto a que no se sintió bien dormir en una cueva. ¿Estoy en lo cierto?"  
"No, solo hacía frío," Kim responded dismissively.  
"¿No tenías miedo?"  
"No, no, mamá, cálmate."  
"How did you end up in this cave anyway?"  
"We got lost. Jason’s fault- he broke the compass."  
Trini laughed, punching Kim’s arm. "Really, girl? ¿No pudiste dejarme decir eso? ¿Seriamente?"  
"Al menos estaban juntos…"  
"Si, we helped each other."  
"I’m glad you made it out."  
"We weren't trapped in there!"  
"So am I." This time, Trini was the one who got punched.

"Oi! Zach! What are you doing?"  
"Texting your _girlfriend_ , duh!"  
Jason groaned and attempted to grab his phone from his little brother. "How many times do I have to tell you this? Kim and I are not a couple! We're just friends!"  
"You say that, and yet you quote Adrien? Interesting…" Zach laughed as he tried to hold the phone out of reach, but his brother was taller and stronger- and he got the phone back.  
"Kim is like my sister. Shut up, Zach."  
Zack made a mock-insulted face. "I didn't say anything!"  
"Oh, good grief…" Jason stared out the window at the night sky, wondering when he'd get a chance to ditch them.

The phone in Trini's lap rang, and the ringtone gave it away as a long-distance call. The caller's ID was Ryan Reyes. "Mamá! Ryan's calling!" She quickly swiped the screen to answer the call.  
"Salaam alaikum!" Ryan greeted her heartily. "How's my little sis doing?"  
"I'm fine, Ryan. I mean, we were attacked by aliens, but I'm fine, big bro." Trini set the call to speakerphone mode so that their mom would also be able to talk.  
"Say _what_? You were attacked by _aliens_? ¿Que demonios? Did I hear you right?" Ryan spluttered, barely getting the words out of his mouth.  
"Yes, Ry-Ry," Trini teased, attempting to hold back a giggle. She knew how much he hated the nickname she'd given him when she was two.  
"Don’t call me that! And since when do aliens exist at all?!"  
"You haven't heard about the secret program on aliens in the army?"  
"You mean Area 51? That theory has been going around for ages. I swear, it's not real."  
"No. I mean actual aliens! Not conspiracy theory aliens! I mean aliens that have scorpion tails and aliens that look like blue baboons and-"  
"And whatever those putty things were!" Kim jumped in, glaring at her friend, before Trini went off on a tangent about Zordon.  
"Oh, hey Kimmy. You're pranking me, right? Because it’s not funny!"  
"Wait, Trini- a blue baboon? You didn’t mention this to the cop! You met another alien besides the scorpion lady??" Katrina nearly stopped in the middle of the highway out of complete shock.  
"Mamá!"  
"No, no, of course not! Trini is just exasperated. You know how she gets when she's ranting," Kim reassured her, sitting on her hands so as not to reveal how nervous she was. "Trini and her imagination…"  
"Okay, what’s going on over there? Mamá, is she kidding?"  
Katrina sighed as she hit the gas. "Sadly, mijo, she isn’t kidding. Their bus was attacked on the way home from the Nevada field trip. Otherwise I wouldn’t be driving Trini and Kimberly home."  
Ryan cursed in multiple languages, mostly in those they didn’t understand. They did catch a few "mierda!"s in there, though, as well as a couple "joder!"s. "I’m coming home right now. There’s no chance of me leaving mi hermanita y hermanito back at home in danger."  
"Ryan! ¡¡¡De ninguna manera!!!"

"Home sweet home!" Zack sighed as he saw the sign for Angel Grove outside the car. It was dark outside, darker than he was used to, but then again, they were entering the city from a different direction than they usually did. Zach had fallen asleep with his head in Jason's lap due to the late hour, and Jason was dozing on his brother's back, making Zack smile a bit. If only he had the same relationship with his little brother…  
"Zack, get ready to go. We're approaching your house." Sarah's voice woke the black ranger from his reverie, and he sprang upright.  
"Yes sensei!"  
Sarah laughed. "Zack, I am not your sensei. You were daydreaming again, weren't you?"  
"I guess so? I was thinking about how Zach and Jason have such a good relationship, while Adam and I… don't. That's honestly an understatement."  
Zack fished around between his legs for his backpack. They'd had to leave their duffle bags and suitcases on the bus, due to there not being enough room on the helicopters, so his shower stuff wasn't with him. He'd need to borrow from Adam- oh, the horror!

"Zack!" May Taylor called as her older son slammed the door behind him. "How are you? Are you alright?"  
"Were you really attacked by aliens? You really slept in a cave? Tell me everything!" Adam, Zack’s little brother, pounced on the opportunity to annoy him with vigor.  
"Mom, Adam, can I please get to the shower first? I seriously stink." He rolled his eyes, attempting not to curse at Adam for being such a jerk two minutes after he’d gotten home. Then again, Adam would be Adam at the end of the day.  
"Of course, Z-black…" Adam snorted as Zack stalked out of the room in high dudgeon.

Zack, his hair still dripping, entered the living room and found his father and brother sitting on the couches, waiting for him. His eyes wandered to his brother, and to his delight, he found that Adam was back in his old wolf onesie. "Really, A?"  
"You really think I give a damn?"  
"Ooh! Nice pun, kiddo!"  
"Shut up, idiot!"  
Alexander, their dad, sighed exasperatedly. "Are you ready to talk now, son?"  
"Dad. I swear, it was nothing."  
"Don’t tell me it was nothing!" May snapped as she walked in, carrying a tray with four steaming mugs of hot chocolate. "I saw Skullovitch’s livestream, so I know what happened!"  
Zack grabbed one of the mugs and took a sip, sighing in pleasure as the heat hit his tongue. His mother liked to add a few spices to her hot chocolate- cinnamon, cayenne and vanilla- but that wasn’t the reason it felt so warm. It just hadn’t had a chance to cool down yet, as Zack realized when he saw Adam nearly spitting it out. This was very odd, considering that normally he was very sensitive to hot and cold. Maybe the coin had given him temperature resistance? Nah, that’s lame, he thought dismissively and turned back to his parents.  
"If so, you know everything that happened. Jason didn't tell us anything about what happened outside. I only felt a bit of shaking."  
"Tell us about the part when you slept in a cave like a caveman!" Adam called, accidently shaking his mug and making the hot chocolate spill on the rug. He winced as May started yelling at him, but Zack's voice cut through everything.  
"The compass was broken and we didn’t want to start wandering around at night."  
"That is a very boring story." Adam stuck out his tongue and stormed down the hall, quickly followed by May and Alexander.  
Zack rolled his eyes. "I’m tired. I’m going to my room now!" he called as he left the living room, not that anyone remained there to hear him.

"Kim, querida, we're at your house." Mrs. Reyes turned to the gymnast, who was gazing silently out the window. They'd only barely managed to stop Ryan from booking a ticket on the next flight back to the USA by telling him about the Power Rangers, and the only thing she wanted to do, right now, was collapse on her bed. Katrina managed to get her attention, though, and she got out of the car with her backpack slung halfway over her arm.  
"Bye Trini…" Kim's words trailed off as she headed down the path to the house, yawning like there was no tomorrow. The door swung open at her push, and her parents, Sierra and José, were waiting there to embrace her in a hug.  
"¡Dios mío, cariño! Estábamos tan preocupados!"   
Kim shook her head. "Mamá, papá, estoy demasiado cansada para esto. Por favor, sólo quiero ir a la cama." She broke free and rushed down the hall. By the time her mom reached her room, Kim’s soft snoring was floating through her open door despite the light still being on.

"Boys, we're home. Wake up!" Mrs. Scott honked the horn loudly, then turned around and shook Zach's wrist. "Boys!"  
"What, already?" Jason yawned and stretched. "Wait, where are Zack and Ms. Appleby?"  
"We dropped Zack off half an hour ago, and Ms. Appleby got off a couple minutes ago. She lives surprisingly close by."  
When they opened the door, five girls were doing a Scooby-stack in the hallway.  
"Are you alright, Jason?"  
"Did you really sleep in a cave?"  
"Wait, you slept in a cave with Kim and Trini? Are you and Kim finally together?"  
"You actually fought against an alien?"  
"You were saved by superheroes?"  
"Please! Give me a break from the questioning! Also, why on earth do all of you think Kim and I are together? Besides, I wasn't there with them alone, Zack and Billy were there too!" Jason snapped at his sisters.  
"Yes, girls, your brother has had a couple of rough days. Let him rest." Sarah waved off her two sons, then turned and whispered to her daughters: "He and Zachariah fell asleep in the car!"  
"Please tell me you took a photo of it!" Dahlia, the only one with black hair like their mom's- all the rest were either redheads like the boys or blonde- begged.  
"Yes, I did. When I stopped at Jason’s teacher’s house I snapped a photo of them. It's adorable." Sarah smiled, just a hint of smirk hiding in the corner of her mouth.  
All the girls grinned as well. Their mom had just given them blackmail.

Kim woke up with a start. She had really needed a quiet night after everything that had happened, but the nightmares wouldn't let her relax. Deciding to do something she absolutely knew would calm her down, she glanced at her leotard, which was hanging on her closet door, and realized that she hadn't practiced with Jason for some time due to the field trip. She grabbed her phone from the bedside table- she'd actually remembered to plug it in, what a miracle- and dialed the familiar number. It took a few seconds for Jason to pick up.  
"Hey… Kim…" Jason panted into the speaker. He was clearly in the middle of his morning run.  
"Hey Jason, do you want to practice at the gym today? It’s a shame to waste the day off we’ve got. Besides, even if we're aiming for the 2022 Pan-Am games, that's still just three years away."  
"Kim, I’m sorry, but I need to practice for the fencing competition first. I mean, it's happening a week before we start school again. But I'll meet you at Ernie’s later? Maybe work on the balance beam or the floor?"  
"Sure, see ya." Kim hung up the call with a heavy heart. Jason was the only one of her friends she'd told about her plan, since he was also doing gymnastics training and it would be nice to have a familiar face out on the floor, but it seemed almost like he was prioritizing fencing over gymnastics. Not that she blamed him, not after what happened the day before. She got out of bed and, throwing some clean clothes on, left her room, only to encounter her parents, who were standing just outside.  
"Now why don’t you tell us what happened, hija?" her mom asked.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations for the Spanish in the chapter:  
> Niñas, por favor--Girls, please  
> Si, Mamá, claro--Yes, Mom, of course  
> ¿Puedo ir contigo?--I'm going with you?  
> ¡Oh, está prendido!--Oh, it's on!  
> Trini, hija mía, ¿cómo te sientes?--Trini, my girl, how are you doing?  
> Me siento bien, mamá--I'm fine, Mom.  
> Apuesto a que no se sintió bien dormir en una cueva. ¿Estoy en lo cierto?--I have a feeling it didn't feel nice sleeping in a cave. Am I right?  
> No, solo hacía frío--Nah, it was just cold  
> ¿No tenías miedo?--Weren't you afraid?  
> No, no, mamá, cálmate.--No, no, Mom, calm down.  
> ¿No pudiste dejarme decir eso? ¿Seriamente?--Couldn't you let me say that? Seriously?  
> Al menos estaban juntos...--At least they were together...  
> Si--yeah  
> ¿Que demonios?--What the hell?  
> mi hermanita y hermanito--my little sister and brother  
> ¡¡¡De ninguna manera!!!--Don't you dare!!!  
> ¡Dios mío, cariño! Estábamos tan preocupados!--Oh my god, sweetheart! We were so worried!  
> Mamá, papá, estoy demasiado cansada para esto. Por favor, sólo quiero ir a la cama.--Mom, Dad, I'm too tired for this. Please, I just want to go to bed.
> 
> Nobody commented any of the references! So sad 😥... Kidding! But the offer continues. Find all the references, and you get the next chapter dedicated to you!  
> Love, SpringStar186 and greenmoon830


	4. Billy's Chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for no chapters this month. As June is pride month, we were planning to make some bonus chapters about the characters who have something to be proud about! Today, June 18th, is Autism Pride Day, so this is the Billy Bonus Chapter!

Billy looked around at the backyard. It was completely cluttered, hard plastic pipes and drills and power saws and boards and screws. Screws everywhere. David’s new climbing rig stood in the back, shining in the sunlight, and it gave Billy an idea. He’d watched his dad put it together, saw the boards to make the platforms, drill holes in the pipes and screw them together to make the climbing parts. He knew- in theory- how to activate all the tools. He wanted a slide- he could make a slide!  
His dad had shooed him away when he’d tried to use the saws, so he’d try to avoid those, but the drills didn’t seem too dangerous. His dad had worn the weird goggles, though, when using a drill, so he would too. He laid out a bunch of pipes in the shape that he wanted, and walked over to the ledge where his dad had left the goggles.  
The goggles were too big. They fell over his head as soon as he put them on, and he started giggling like mad. Okay, that wouldn’t work. He returned to the house, searched for the pool bag and retrieved his swimming goggles. Those should work.  
His dad came home from a request for a fix done at home just over an hour and a half later, and was stunned to see his five-year-old son in the backyard, wearing swimming goggles, and busily spinning a screwdriver to screw in a screw into a pipe. He’d already put most of what seemed to be a ladder together, and there were a few boards laid out side by side.  
“Billy! Habibi, stop!” Matthew raced to take the screwdriver from his son and scooped his goggles off. “What were you thinking, kiddo?”  
“I wanted a slide, and you were away, so I decided to make it myself.” Billy’s speech patterns were far more eloquent than Matthew had realized before, and his logic was really quite impeccable. He couldn’t deny that. The kid wanted a slide, so he decided to build one.  
“Please tell me you didn’t touch the saws. Please…”  
“I didn’t, why? I could tell that it was dangerous,” Billy stated as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. He reached for the screwdriver to continue his work, but Matthew held it out of his reach.  
“I’ll buy you a slide, and we can assemble it together, but please, don’t do anything like this on your own. It could be dangerous.”  
“I’m getting a slide!” Billy yelled happily, running around in circles like a cat chasing its tail, but far more excited.  
Laila won’t be happy. But there, what else could I do? Let him try to build one? Matthew considered as he gave his son a piggyback ride to the car. They were going to head to Walmart and see what they could find.

The Cranstons were on the plane from Los Angeles to Islamabad, Pakistan, on their way to visit Laila’s relatives, the Jafari family. Billy, at eight years old, was the calmest of the four as he sat next to his brother, his head leaning on David’s shoulder.  
“Are you nervous? It’s your first flight.” David nudged Billy gently, distracting him from the screen on which he’d been watching Deathly Hallows part 2.  
Billy reached for the screen and paused the movie. “Nah, I’m not nervous. I studied how the plane works before we got on. That’s why I was hogging Oumi’s laptop before the flight. Yes, I’ve studied aeronautics for months, but I didn’t know what type of plane we’d be on, so the moment I found out, I had to investigate.”  
David laughed. “Well, I never. Dad, did you hear that?”  
Matthew leaned over and shushed him. “Quiet down. You’re fourteen, you know that you’re supposed to respect the people around you on the flight!”  
Laila sighed, gripping the arms of her seat as though it were the first time she were on this flight. “Shirina, let him be excited for once. They’re meeting their cousins for the first time- this is a big deal for them.”  
“But…” Matthew knew better than to argue with his wife. Laila was a strict disciplinarian, a skill honed by a teaching degree and years of practice with teaching Arabic, and occasionally also Urdu or Pashto. If she said something, he usually agreed- that is, unless she was completely wrong, and in that case, he wouldn’t be afraid to tell her off.

**~~20 hours later~~**

Laila smiled as the plane finally hit the tarmac. She hadn't been able to sleep at all, despite having been awake for nearly forty hours at that point. Her brother in law, Nuri, should be waiting for them at the airport, ready to take them home- maybe Malek and Amir would be with him, maybe not. Aisha was a question mark, and Karan was only two years old, so she wouldn’t be there.  
They made their way through customs quite quickly, with only a small hiccup due to a misfiling of Matthew’s e-visa, and reached baggage claim within half an hour of arrival. No one was able to stay on their feet by the time they got to the car- with the exception of Billy, who had slept on the plane and was chatting with Malek in animated Urdu- and they were asleep even before Nuri's car reached the exit.  
Aisha was standing outside the house as they pulled up, holding Karan in her arms and trying to restrain the over enthusiastic Amir from running into the street. She smiled as her dad and Malik got out of the car, then waved at the Cranstons as they emerged one by one, eyes still cobwebbed with sleep. “Salaam! Kya hal hê, Chachi?”  
Laila blinked, then laughed. “Bhatiji, Matthew-shirina doesn’t understand Urdu. I’ve taught my boys, though.”  
“Mazerat!” Aisha paused, then corrected herself. “Sorry, Uncle, I didn’t know. I’ll try speak English now on. Maa ensured that we all know to speak English.”  
Billy was honestly surprised by her lack of accent. Yes, there was the slightest hint of foreignness to her pronunciation, and her grammar wasn’t perfect, but other than that, she could have been from the USA. There was nothing to give it away. Same with Malik, though they hadn’t spoken in English- he’d wanted to test out his Urdu.  
Aisha was really nice to him, which surprised Billy. It turned out that she also liked books, particularly ones with female heroines, and they talked a lot about how some books refused to acknowledge that girls are smart. She also didn’t mind the fact that he was uncomfortable making eye contact, so most of their conversations ended up being them sitting on a couch, reading books and debating about the worst clichés in teen literature.

Billy was attending a science summer camp over the summer. He’d just turned 14, his hair was long and floppy, and he was having a lot of fun. His parents had definitely known what they were doing when they’d signed him up. But they were bothered by something. Even he could tell that.  
“Even though all the kids here are nerds, he’s not talking to them. He’s standoffish. He’s not even trying to make friends,” Billy’s counselor told Matthew right before he went in to pick his son up. “I believe Billy may have interpersonal communication problems.”  
Matthew frowned as he reversed out of the parking spot and turned onto the highway. Billy should at least be talking to the other kids at camp. He _had_ been homeschooled for years due to Laila's insistence, but David had been homeschooled for some years as well, and he didn’t act like that. He honestly thought they should test what’s going on with Billy, but he also knew that Laila would object.  
“Laila, we need to talk,” Matthew announced a few days later, while Billy was at camp and David was off playing soccer in the park next to the youth center. He’d made sure that none of the kids would be around so that they could talk in private.  
“What’s going on?” Laila settled on the couch and tore off her hijab, shaking her hair loose. She had a feeling that this would be a very long conversation.  
“I think we need to take Billy to a psychologist to be evaluated- and, if it’s necessary, diagnosed. He isn’t talking with the other kids. He doesn't join in the group activities and he actively avoids making friends, preferring to read instead. He barely looks anyone in the eyes. Even us.” Matthew started ranting at length, but Laila interrupted him about one minute in.  
“Well, he was homeschooled for years. He’s a shy kid, he’s barely met any kids his age- of course he won’t talk to them!”  
“Maybe so, but he won't be able to make friends if we don't get him into a situation where he has to! I really think we need to take him to be evaluated,” Matthew countered, wiping some grease off his hand and sighing.  
“Nothing is wrong with my son! He's completely fine! Of course, I would prefer it if he believed in Allah, but that doesn’t mean that there's something wrong with him!”  
“I never said that there's anything wrong with him! I’m saying that if he has difficulties making friends we should find out why it is and help him out!”  
“He just doesn’t know how to deal with the world! He hasn't met enough people in his life!”  
“And whose idea was that, huh? You’re the one who insisted that Billy be homeschooled! David was a different case entirely- he _wanted_ to meet more people and make friends. Billy hates people, and you’re the one who allowed him to live in his comfort zone! You didn't change anything or make him deal with any of his weaknesses, and that's _not_ how you teach someone to overcome weaknesses!”  
“I was just trying to protect my son!”  
“You weren't protecting him, though! You were just making him soft and unused to challenges. He has no idea how to talk with anyone who isn't me or you or David!”  
“I’ll show you, he can do it if he wants to! We're going to enlist him in school, and you'll see how wrong you are!”  
“Yeah, yeah, that's great, love, but I don’t think it’s going to help. Have you even _seen_ his daily routine? He washes his face _at least_ four times a day, and there's no way that's normal- plus, he hates when anyone touches him and he won't wear anything that isn't made of cotton!”  
“He's sensitive to touch! That's not something bad! Oh, and he wears viscose too!”  
“I don’t think that you can use that as an excuse, Laila.”  
Laila groaned and stormed off, muttering to herself. The last thing Matthew could hear her say was: “I'm going to sign him up for school, and Allah help me if he doesn't figure himself out.”

Billy sat in front of the psychologist, trying as hard as he could to avoid her gaze. Her pink rhinestone-covered glasses weren’t helping his nerves, and neither was the tense silence his parents weren’t doing anything to interrupt.  
“Well, Billy, do you know why you’re here?”  
“Because my parents are complete worrywarts and the school counselor is an arse.”  
She laughed. “Well, can’t deny that, to the best of my knowledge. Your parents are worried about you and your lack of ability to make friends.”  
"I don't need friends!" Billy retorted, turning and glaring at his parents. "I'm just fine on my own. Thanks a lot, Dad, Oumi." He spun back around and folded his arms, staring at the polished wood desk as though he could set it on fire with laser beams from his eyes.  
"Habibi, you're a teenager. Yes, you have Einstein's IQ, but you're also still only fourteen. You need to learn to be a kid for once, otherwise the chance will escape you and you'll forever wonder why you never prized your youth for what it was- a gift," Matthew corrected with a sad smile. "I should know."  
Everyone twisted to look at Billy's father, who pushed a few strands of loose black-and-gray hair out of his face. "Let's not talk about it. It's kind of a sob story, and besides, we're here for you, Billy-boy."  
His son rolled his eyes and turned back around. “Well, what’s the deal?”  
The psychologist breathed in, then clenched a fist and gave a short nod. “Here goes… from all that I know about you, you have a diagnosis on the autism spectrum," she blurted out.  
Billy gaped. He definitely hadn’t been expecting that. “Wait, what? Autism isn’t, like, the poster disorder for people who have mental deficiency and seizures and are too dumb to live?”  
The psychologist stared at him in surprise and shook her head. "Nope. Autism is a spectrum, and those people you mentioned are on the lower end. You’re on the higher end. Ever since the DSM-5 was published- that's the official book of disorder classifications, by the way- no matter where you are on the spectrum, you're classified under Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD."  
“That’s just dumb. Why is everything considered ASD if there is such a wide gap between the lower and higher ends of the spectrum?”  
“Every few years the DSM changes. In the DSM-IV there were other classifications, such as Asperger’s or PDD-NOS. But now everything is just considered autism.”  
“And where would I have been in those classifications?” Billy asked, lowering his eyes even further. It felt like her gaze was burning into him, peeling the layers of personality off him.  
“You, if you had come before the DSM-5 was published, would have been classified as having Asperger's Syndrome- a related disorder to high-functioning autism, with slight differences that often improve IQ. But it doesn’t really matter anymore- it’s not relevant nowadays, because it’s all become ASD.”  
Billy glanced back to see how his parents were reacting to this news, and was astonished to discover them looking like this wasn't new to them. "You knew?"  
Laila shrugged and reached out to her son. "We didn't know until last week, when she called to ask us whether we wanted her to tell you in person or should she just tell us and let us decide."  
Billy knocked his mom's hand away and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Matthew was about to apologize, but the psychologist started chuckling for what seemed to be no reason.  
"I know what you're going to say, and it's no big deal. This is actually not as bad as I’ve seen it get in this office- one time I needed to call security on someone who'd really lost it. Whereas Billy… He even closed the door behind him.”  
"He slammed the door," Laila corrected, but she was smiling.

Matthew, Laila and David made a beeline for Billy's room, disregarding Dr. Taiga's instructions about silence completely. He was lying on the cot, eyes half-closed, with stitches lining his throat just above the collarbone. If it weren't for the clothes- dark blue shirt, black shorts- it was questionable whether they would have recognized him. He seemed completely relaxed, whereas normally his face would normally be screwed up as though in thought even when asleep.  
David’s eyes widened at the sight of his little brother. He’d never seen him looking so vulnerable before. It was as if all of his worries and emotional burden had fallen away, leaving him looking younger than he was. Billy had always been young-looking, despite being far taller than others his age, and seeing him like this… Well, he looked more like a ten-year-old than his fourteen years normally allowed. Whether that was just how relaxed his face was or something else, David didn’t know.  
Billy opened his eyes fully, feeling their gaze on him, and glared at his family. They might call it compassion, but to him it was just plain old pity, and he didn’t like being pitied.  
“Stop staring at me like that!” He reached out and swatted Matthew’s hand away, making his mom and dad smile slightly. It was good to know that their son was still the same as always.  
“Like what?” Laila asked, tilting her head laughingly despite knowing exactly what he meant.  
“Don't pity me!” Billy scowled and turned onto his side, which twisted his stitches and made him let out a yelp of pain.  
“Billy, we're worried about you. Stop pushing us away!” David slammed his hand on the table with a loud whack, as though trying to emphasize what he'd said, then quickly withdrew the hand and shook it. "Ow! That hurts! Though I guess that _was_ my fault…"  
Billy found that funny.  
"Seriously?"

The moment they got home, Billy locked himself in his room with a stack of sandwiches and his computer. He wanted to rest and get the events of the past few days out of his mind. They were horrible- so many things had happened, and his head had been spinning in confusion for nearly forty-eight hours by now. He only had two days to rest, because on Monday he would be going back to school, so he’d need to rest up and try to organize his mind a little.  
His parents were so worried about him that he actually thought that going to school would be better than staying home. Except for the fact that he did  _ not  _ want to see the others. It was just too soon for that. He needed more time. It would be likely that all of the students would feel pity for him- and he didn’t want it. As far as he knew, everyone hated him anyway, so pretending that they cared about him would just be plain old hypocrisy. Dealing with a bunch of annoying teens is beyond him, especially after everything that happened. He assumed that at the very least, the foursome wouldn’t try to talk to him after what happened in the hospital, so that’s one thing less to deal with.  
So his biggest problem on Monday would be… Cassidy! He blurted out an “Oh crap!” at the realization, because she would be a  _ really _ big problem. He had a regular meeting with the school counselor instead of Monday’s PE, and at first he was glad to have an excuse to not be in PE, but Cassidy was so annoying and not worth his time that he got sick of it before their first session was even over. She would probably insist on talking about the events of the trip and how to deal with the aftermath of the whole thing. He groaned into his sandwich and, dropping it back on the plate, buried his face in his pillow. Monday was going to be a long day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations for the Urdu and Arabic in the chapter:  
> Salaam! Kya hal hê, Chachi?- Hello! How are you doing, Auntie?  
> Bhatiji- niece  
> Mazerat- sorry  
> Oumi- mom  
> habibi-my boy
> 
> Well, happy birthday to me! (Me being SpringStar2004, LOL.) As proud Aspies, we figured that we may as well celebrate Autism Pride Day in the best way possible, i.e. spreading the word. Autism is not a disease, nor is it something necessarily bad. It's a difference in the way the brain is wired, leading to differences in communicative and social skills. Don't make the mistake Billy made and assume that we're all the same, because we're all just as unique as any other person on earth.  
> Love you!  
> SpringStar2004 and greenmoon830  
> #blacklivesmatter


	5. To the counselor we go

**The next Monday...**

The students returned to school after a stressful weekend, still in shock. Billy had been dismissed from the hospital on Saturday, and despite Dr. Oliver's recommendation to stay at home and rest for a few days, he was also there- because there was no way Billy would miss school- but he didn’t want to talk to anyone.  
"Hello kids, I hope you managed to get some rest after the events of last week. This is the list of your times at the counselor. Billy- you’re first. After all, you always have a session, so it's just moved up," Ms. Appleby said.  
"But I can’t miss a class!" Billy protested furiously. "It doesn't work that way!"  
"In this specific lesson we're talking about the trip. You aren't missing anything. Go," she told him sternly, not giving him a chance to argue- not that Billy would try to argue with a teacher. 

Billy left the classroom in a huff and dragged his feet on his way to the counselor. He had a weekly meeting with her instead of Monday's PE lesson and he was absolutely sick of it. PE was better than a meeting with her, and he hated PE. Her door was easily recognizable: plain white, with a brass plaque on it that read "School Counselor"- he knocked and sighed. Why was he doing this again?  
"Oh, Billy! Come on in!" Cassidy’s voice was far too cheery for the time of morning. Billy opened the door warily and, walking to the black armchair, he sat staring at the analogue clock that was hanging on the wall. Its steady ticking was reassuring. Cassidy, a curvy woman with café-au-lait colored skin and bleach-blonde hair, was sitting in the armchair across from his. Damnit, Billy hated her hair. It should have been brown. The bleach made her look like a wannabe news anchor. "How are you Billy? When were you released from the hospital?"  
"Two days ago," Billy muttered. He looked down at the floor and placed his hands on his head, attempting to ignore the counselor.  
"How are you feeling? Have you recovered from the recent events? Do you want to tell me what happened?" Cassidy's questions were rapid-fire bullets, almost dizzyingly fast.  
"Fine, yes and no," he answered abruptly and returned to ignoring her.  
"Billy, we should talk about it. I know you’ve been through a lot, I'm sure it’s hard for you, but you’re in denial right now."  
"I’m not in denial!"  
"Then tell me what happened."  
Billy sat there quietly, refusing to answer.  
"Billy, you were attacked by an alien- of course it's hard to deal with. It also completely makes sense that it’ll be harder for you than other people." Cassidy wasn't even sure why she was saying this, but she hoped that it worked.  
"Oh yeah? Then why is that?" Billy retorted angrily. He had a feeling that he knew what she was going to say, but he was done with the bullshit and wanted to get it over with.  
"Changes and dealing with unexpected crises are harder for people like you to deal with."  
"Like me how exactly?!"  
"People who are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders."  
"Well? What about it? Is there a problem with that?!"  
"No, there isn’t _anything_ wrong with that! I’m not trying to change you!" Cassidy winced. He steered their sessions this way every single time.  
"Really? Then why do I need to meet with you every week? Why did you even bring this up?!" Billy knocked the chair over in a rage, and, breathing heavily, stormed out of the room. He ran through the hallways, barging into the library without giving a shit about the quiet rule and plopping himself onto a beanbag.  
The librarian saw him and nodded in hello. Ciara was Australian, with a way of speaking that made him feel right at home. She knew that the library served as a relaxant for Billy, and also knew to expect him at any time of the day if he got in a bad mood. Not that it happened a lot, thankfully, but it happened often enough for Ciara to have a contingency plan on hand. She walked over to Billy’s beanbag and handed him the sheaf of papers he’d been working on for months. "Here you go, Billy. You want a twizzler?"  
Billy smiled and took the papers from the librarian. For some reason he couldn’t comprehend, Ciara had an obsession with American licorice, and lately- ever since she’d discovered Twizzlers- she kept a pack of it in her desk, despite it technically being against the rules. He gratefully took the licorice- she’d started stocking up on the chocolate flavored kind- and half-snickered as she placed one above her lip like a moustache. "Good grief, what the heck?" The blue ranger walked over to his usual table, grabbed a pencil, and started scribbling on the top page. Ciara, consumed by curiosity, peeked over his shoulder and managed to spot a sketch of a car- perhaps a Volkswagen Golf?- with helicopter blades sprouting from the top.  
Billy laid down his pencil for a moment as the other rangers came to mind- specifically, Kimberly and her flight ability- and when he remembered the rangers, he recalled the visions. In an attempt to banish those memories, he thought about the day he first came to school. His life was so much simpler then. He was homeschooled, he advanced at his own pace, and when his mom decided that they were done for the day- which sometimes happened to be an hour after they started- he could do anything he wanted. Many times that meant working with his dad in the garage, tweaking the old VW Fox, or just reading a book. All that ended when he started school, though.

Billy stared apprehensively at the glass doors of Angel Grove High. They loomed before him, marking the beginning of his new life, but he pressed forward through the empty halls. He’d already visited the school before, when his going to school wasn’t a certainty but merely an option, so he was familiar enough with the school to navigate it easily. Thanks to his homeschooling, he was quite smart for his age, so the plan was to have him skip a grade and study with kids who were a year older than him. He honestly wasn’t that excited to start school. Sure, he loved learning new things, but learning in a classroom with a bunch of noisy kids surrounding him probably wasn’t going to be his cup of tea.  
"Hello there, Billy, how are you? I'm Clara Appleby. We met before, when you came to look at the school, I think." Ms. Appleby walked up behind him, unnoticed by the Cranstons. "Would you like to come with me to the classroom? You came very early, the other students aren't here yet."  
"Yes, we know it's early. Billy specifically requested that we come here before, as he phrased it, 'the crushing masses of humanity fill the halls.'" Billy’s mother smiled at her son, letting her hand float just above his shoulder.  
Ms. Appleby led the Cranstons down one hallway after another, and stopped when they reached a block of dark blue lockers that radiated out from the room at the end of the hall. "You brought a lock, yes? Pick the locker that you want. Inside are your schoolbooks and your lunch card."  
Billy hung his lock, an elaborate combination lock, on one of the lockers, fixed the spot in his memory, and continued down the hallway.  
Ms. Appleby ducked past him and opened the classroom door, pointing to the plaque on the wall. "Our room is 10b. The number signifies the grade, the letter is the class identifier. On another topic, where would you like to sit?"  
"In the front row," Billy muttered, avoiding her gaze. He slipped past her- no mean feat, considering that he was over six feet tall- and headed for the nearest desk.  
"All right."  
"Is it okay if we go, son?" Billy’s dad asked.  
"Yes. See you later." He didn’t even bother to look at them.  
His parents shared a look. "Bye, honey," his mom called as they left.  
Billy slung off his backpack, put on his headphones, and leaned back with a podcast about Shakespeare. After a few minutes, he got bored, pulled a book about Einstein out of his backpack, and started reading it.  
It was only about half an hour later that students started filing in. They didn’t recognize Billy, and, wary of the guy who looked like a bully but seemed to be completely immersed in his book, whispered theories about him behind his back. He didn’t notice, of course, because he was so concentrated on his book, but even if he had, he probably wouldn't have cared.  
"Um… Hello…" A pretty Hispanic-looking girl tapped his shoulder gently, making Billy jump. He glanced at her for a moment, then returned to his book.  
The girl groaned. "Oi! Jason! He's not responding!"  
On the other side of the room, a redheaded boy gave her a thumbs up. "Roger that, Trini. I'm coming over right now.  
Another boy leaned in, his brown skin standing out against the white walls. "Jason, are you insane? He's taller than I am! He could probably knock you across the room with one hit!"  
A new girl ran across the room, waving her hand. "Cut it out, Zack. I trust in Jason, though I do _not_ trust that new kid."  
Jason grinned. "Thanks Kim."  
He walked over to Billy and waved his hand between his face and the book, a difficult task due to Billy's face being practically buried in the book. "Hey, welcome to our class. I'm Jason, Trini is the one who just tried to talk to you, and Kim and Zack are over there. And you are?"  
"Billy Cranston."  
"Hi Billy. It's obviously your first day here- did you transfer? Or did you skip a grade?" Trini chimed in, resting her hand on Billy's desk.  
He sighed. "Please, just leave me alone."

Cassidy sighed and pulled out her phone. Her fingers flew as she typed a quick text message to Ms. Appleby that Billy ran off, as always, and for her to send in the next student in. After Bulk and another student came and went, it was Kim's turn. The tiny gymnast refused to walk normally to her session- nope, she did cartwheels down the halls, and instead of knocking with her fist like a normal person, she banged on the door with the heel of her sneaker. "Come on in," Cassidy called, mentally preparing herself for one of the most insane tenth graders she’d ever met.  
Kim opened the door and did a round-off into the room, enjoying the expression on Cassidy’s face as the counselor dropped her pen. Ink from her fountain pen sprayed on the pad of paper lying in front of her, and she tore the first page off with a curse Kim didn’t know but was happy to learn.  
 _'Great. Now I know that she’s writing it down, meaning that I know not to give her any dirt on me.’_ Kim smirked, tossed her shoulder bag onto the chair, and bent over into a backbend. Cassidy stared at her for a moment, not sure how to react.  
"Why aren't you sitting down?" Cassidy asked cautiously. She didn’t know the girl in front of her very well, but judging from what she was doing, Kim was kind of crazy, and she didn't want another student running off in the middle of their session.  
"This is the only way I can focus," Kim replied through a giggle, concentrating on her backbend.  
Cassidy decided not to push the subject. "So tell me, what happened on the trip?"  
"What happened because of this trip is that I missed practices!" Kim snapped, kicking up from her backbend in a handspring-like move.  
"So instead you practice right now on my rug? Seriously? Now how did you get lost?"  
"Billy broke the compass."  
"You were on the same team as Billy?" Cassidy asked, bewildered. Of course, Ms. Appleby had given her a list of the teams, but she wanted to hear Kim’s thoughts on the subject.  
"Yeah, like that was successful." Kim rolled her eyes and executed a tight backflip.  
"What happened?"  
"That jerk broke the compass, and then when we slept in the cave he woke us up at 3 AM because… because he has a weird clock that woke him up at that time, God knows why… he told us stupid boring facts about a lot of stuff during the whole trip, then he slept so deeply on the bus and got himself attacked by Stingerina, which made us all go to the hospital, and then when we went to see how he was feeling he just freaked out about us and acted like we don't even exist and like we didn't just have a crazy bonding experience. Seriously- I defended him to Kira and it's like he doesn’t give a shit!" Kim ranted furiously, attempting to cartwheel over the armchair and nearly knocking off the potted plant on Cassidy's desk.  
"Kimberly Ann Hart! Sit down, what you're doing is dangerous!" Cassidy scolded angrily. That was the last thing she needed- one of the students getting hurt under her supervision.  
Kim groaned, facepalmed, and sat down with a huff.

PE was different that day. It was handed down from above that due to the events of the week before that the students needed to learn how to protect themselves. But of course, first came four laps around the gym.  
"That reminds me, we should practice using our powers in case of an attack. So, how about this afternoon, instead of going to Ernie's, we practice?" Jason suggested in an undertone. Then, just for the sake of doing it, he flung himself into a handspring and hit the ground running even faster.  
"Or we can start practice now!" Trini called with a laugh and sped up. She wasn't running so much faster that somebody would suspect, but it was obvious to her fellow rangers that she was using her superspeed to keep it up. Jason tried to keep up in order for it to seem at least slightly more normal, but to no avail.  
"I'm also going to practice!" Kim whispered enthusiastically and attempted to run on air. Her feet were really close to the floor, so no one noticed that she was flying, but she found out that it just slowed her down and dropped back to the floor.  
"Wow, Trini, you’ve improved! You could probably give Kira a run for her money. Hang on- where _is_ Kira?" Ms. Goldstein, the PE teacher, glanced around in confusion.  
"She's with the counselor- you know, because of what happened on the trip," Skull volunteered.  
"Right! I forgot about that. Ms. Appleby told me about it, but… damn my horrific memory. This is why I became a PE teacher. Anyway, Trini, how did you improve so much in such a short period of time?"  
"Um…"  
"She practices with me in the mornings now." Jason invented a cover story on the fly and hoped it would work.  
"Yeah, exactly."  
"Well, divide into pairs. I'll be calling out moves, and you will practice them on each other. Remember, this is self-defense _only_ , so try not to hurt each other. Wait, Bulkmeier, get back here! Why are you still running?"  
"I’m only on the second round…" Bulk replied, huffing and puffing like a steam engine as he ran around the gym. His weight made his running style completely off and made a few impolite people snicker.  
"Just get back here!"  
The students split up into pairs with their best friends, automatically forgoing heterogeneous matchups- Jason and Zack, Trini and Kim, Bulk and Skull, Diane and Marlena, etc. Before Ms. Goldstein could call out a move, Trini and Kimberly were already mid-battle- Kim using her gymnastic prowess to avoid Trini's attacks, and Trini dodging Kim's kicks with ease. Neither of them were entirely sure what they were doing, but it was obvious that they were having fun.  
The teacher sighed. "Okay, that's also an option." This, of course, sent the gym into complete mayhem, with the only fights that actually looked like fights and not complete smackdowns being those between the rangers. At one point Trini moved so fast in order to trip Kim that her body blurred, and in reaction, Kim's flip sent her way too high in the air. Luckily, nobody noticed.  
"Trini, Kim, are you completely insane? Don’t you remember what Zordon told us? We have to keep our identities secret! It's the third rule of being a power ranger!" Jason let his head flop against the locker door as he attempted to detangle himself from his gym shirt. Sometimes he was really sick of being the dad of the group, especially when Trini was one of the kids.  
"But we hid it really well- no one noticed," Kim dismissed Jason's worries with a wave of her hand.  
"You did not! It would have been obvious to anyone looking that you had something unnatural going on!"  
"Jason, I get it, but it’s not that big of a deal. Oh! I have to meet with Cassidy now! See ya later!" Trini took off down the hallway, humming a song.

"Kirameki sugi chuui, you're luckysta-" Trini froze in the doorway of the counselor's room, her head whirling with realizations. She'd been humming the theme song for a Japanese series that she and Seb liked to watch together, but then it hit her that the type of series Kyuranger was part of basically described teams of Japanese Power Rangers. If so, could it be that those teams actually existed?!  
"Trini? Everything alright?" Cassidy asked slowly, frowning.  
Trini looked around and realized what had happened. She blushed, walked into the room, and curled up in the armchair.  
"Why did you freeze up just now?" Cassidy's eyebrows scrunched up in worry.  
"Ummm, I just remembered everything that happened on the trip. It feels surreal, like I watched it on TV or something. Not like it actually happened to me in real life."  
"It’s probably pretty scary to meet aliens. But from what I heard you and Kim spoke to her like it was nothing special. Why-and how- did you do that?"  
"We were still scared out of our minds. Trust me. We just figured that everyone else was more scared than we were, so we decided to lighten things up a bit."  
"How close are you and Kimberly?" Cassidy queried, a weird tone- as though she meant it in another way- layering into her voice.  
"We’re best friends…" Trini replied. She had a feeling as to where Cassidy was going with this, but she really hoped she was wrong.  
"You don’t want to be more than just friends?"  
Trini stared at the counselor in utter disbelief. How on earth did she know? "Why do you ask?"  
"Well I heard some rumors about your ahm…" Cassidy's words trailed off. She wasn’t sure how to say what she wanted to say.  
"Where did you hear that?"  
"Like I said, it's just a rumor."  
"How is this relevant?"  
"It’s not. You can love whoever you want- boy or girl. But why aren't you being honest with yourself and with everyone else about this?"  
"Well, you heard about it, so apparently it’s not a secret anymore."  
"Have you told your family?"  
"Mamá is Catholic. She doesn’t believe in this stuff- she'd say it’s not real and that it's just a passing phase, and she would just go to a priest to talk about it and pray for me or something like that." Tears had welled up in Trini’s eyes by the time she finished her sentence.  
"What about your siblings?"  
"Ryan is abroad, and Seb- well, I don’t know how to tell him. We're close, yes, but he's also close to Mamá."  
Cassidy closed her eyes and nodded. This was something she could deal with. "You want to talk about it?"

"You’re not gonna believe what Cassidy knows!" Trini ran up, her usually calm expression flushed with frustration and disbelief.  
"¿Que pasó, hermana?" Kim frowned as the yellow ranger collapsed in her chair, panting.  
"She knows I’m lesbian."  
"¡¿Que?! How did she find out?!" Kim's jaw dropped, and she grabbed Trini's arm.  
"I don’t know! She said she heard rumors about my sexuality, but aside from you, Jason and Zack, nobody else knows! Who could it have been?" Trini yelled in frustration, banging her fist on the desk and groaning.  
"Maybe someone overheard us talking about it. Can’t you think of anyone from our class who might have been eavesdropping on us?"  
"Crap! Kira knows! I completely forgot! ¡Dios, soy tan idiota!"  
"Wait, how does she know?"  
"She was in the same music course as me at one point- I think she left about three months ago- and there's another gay kid in the class. He's from a different school. We were discussing the LGBTQA+ spectrum in relation to ourselves, and it's possible that she overheard us. Mier- no. You don't swear. Shut up."  
"I can’t believe she told Cassidy! She is _so_ going to pay!"

Jason was calm. He was not a fan of psychology or psychiatry, especially since they often required a level of openness that he preferred not to have, but he understood why they might help other people. Meanwhile, his goal was to get this over with as fast as possible. He opened the door and walked in silently, acknowledging Cassidy’s presence with a tilt of the head.  
Cassidy was dumbstruck. All day, the kids coming in had either been insane or emotional wrecks, or some combination of the two. Trini, who had left twenty minutes ago, was the closest to sane she’d gotten all day, and now this kid- Jason Scott- walked in and appeared to be in full control of himself. His blue-gray eyes were tightly shut gates, showing only what he was allowing her to see and no more. Cassidy couldn’t help but think that she might be hallucinating due to an overload of crazy when Jason made a slight bow.  
"Hello, Mrs. Devin." As he sat down, he pulled something out of his pocket- a silver keychain with unfamiliar lettering- and clenched it in his fist, in the first display of anything like emotion she’d seen from him.  
"Why did you bow to me?"  
Jason smiled, seeming to be half-embarrassed, half-amused. "Did I? I guess it's kind of a habit of mine. I have to bow to a worthy opponent in fencing, and to the judges in gymnastics competitions, so it sort of became a habit."  
Both shrugged and turned to the business at hand. Cassidy shot out question after question, and Jason, having recovered his composure, answered them in a brisk tone, not unlike that of Cassidy herself. It felt disorienting to her.

Jason returned to the classroom, only to encounter two extremely furious girls blocking the doorway. "What happened? Trini, are you alright?" He didn't bother asking Kim because she was bound to get angry at the smallest things, whatever they were.  
"Yeah, I'm okay, but that _bruja_ Kira is not going to be _okay_ once we're done with her!" Trini spat. She stormed off down the hall, followed closely by Kim, who turned for a second and gave Jason a tiny apologetic shrug. Then they were out of sight, leaving a thoroughly confused red ranger behind them.  
"Kira Morgan, you are going to _pay!_ " Kim’s voice echoed back, and the sounds of a scuffle filled the air. Jason was about to go find them, but Zack grabbed the neckline of his shirt and hauled him back.  
"Leave it. It seems that Kira told Cassidy about Trini’s sexual orientation, so now the girls are going to murder her. Do you want to watch?" The black ranger smirked when Jason shuddered.  
"Heck no. We should go look for Billy- I haven't seen him since the morning, and we haven’t spoken to him at all since the trip." Jason sighed. "He might just be the key to everything."  
"Did you forget about the part when he freaked out at the hospital and didn’t want to see us or speak with us?"  
"So? He may have the answer we need."

"He’s not in the cafeteria. I double-checked."  
"He isn’t in the park either, though why I checked there is a mystery to me."  
"Maybe because you wanted to play on the swings?" Jason teased, breaking out into a grin and running off before Zack could react.

"Find anything?"  
"Nope." Zack paused for a moment, then slapped himself. "Gah! This is Billy we’re talking about- he’s probably in the library!"  
"Damn! You’re right!"  
The two boys dashed off, skidding into the library a few minutes later, with Jason tripping over Zack’s untied shoelace as he ran towards the librarian. "Uh… Ciara? That’s your name, right? Where’s Billy? We need to talk to him. It’s urgent."  
Ciara looked at him strangely. The only one who ever went looking for Billy, _ever,_ was the school counselor, Cassidy, and these two boys were clearly not Cassidy. She sighed, crammed another twizzler into her mouth, and shoved the rest into a drawer. "He’s at his regular table, on the other side of the library." Ciara showed the boys where the table was. All Billy’s things were there, but not Billy. "Huh… I’m not sure what happened, but he left his things here. That's not like him at all."  
"Thanks a lot, we'll take it from here," Jason called as Ciara returned to her desk.  
"Wow, he designed a flying car? That’s epic! Anyway, where is he?" Zack groaned, squeezing his eyes shut as though he could find him telepathically.  
Jason placed a hand on his forehead. "I don't know, maybe he went to the bathroom or something?"  
"Or he heard us and decided to run." Zack rolled his eyes. The bell rang, filling the school with a lively drumbeat, and he cursed. "Damnit, I have to go meet with Cassidy now. See you, J, I'll meet you as soon as possible."

Billy had been at the library for nearly four hours by the time the footsteps started echoing in the halls. It was the sound of running feet, and then a thud and a few colorful curses. Jason’s voice. He gritted his teeth, dropped his pencil on the table, and made a beeline for the back door of the library. As he ran, he dodged behind a tree to avoid being spotted by Trini and Kim, who seemed to be thrashing another girl, and then angled off to behind the gym. There was a cluster of trees there, as well as a few boulders. Billy had found it several months before, when Ms. Appleby had forced him to go out in the yard and meet people; of course, he’d avoided doing so at all costs.  
Because he was so concentrated on making sure nobody had followed him, Billy didn’t notice the rock sticking up out of the ground, and, as he tripped over it and flailed, his morpher flew out of his pocket. The shimmering white energy of a portal formed underneath the blue ranger just as he hit the ground, making him collapse into the Command Center and accidentally trip Alpha, who was messing around with a few wires.  
"Ai-yi-yi! Why are you here?"  
"Hello, Billy. Is everything alright? Is there a monster attack?" Zordon's hologram enlarged, sending the blue ranger into a panic.  
He was about to dash back through the portal, but it collapsed shut. "No! No! No! NO! Why did I get here?! I only tripped and I thought I was in my quiet place that doesn't mean I planned to be here!!!"  
The Eltarian's worry was replaced momentarily with slight amusement. Alpha, being a robot, could not emote, but the aura coming from him made Zordon think that his robot aide would have rolled his eyes had that been possible. He made a mental note to have him sent at some point back to Edenoi for upgrades.  
"Hey, Billy, do you need help with that flying car of yours?" Alpha was acting nicer than the previous time they'd met, which not only confused Billy, but also infuriated him. He wanted to hate the robot because it would give him a reason to hate the whole enterprise, but now Alpha was trying to help with his flying car design.  
Billy’s eyes widened. How on earth did the robot know? "How do you know about that?! Are you spying on me?!"  
"Ai-yi-yi!"  
"We’re not spying on you, we’re just checking in to make sure that everything is alright. We have tiny biodrones all over the place- it’s not just you, we need to ensure that nobody is attacked by Rita and Zedd’s forces," Zordon cut in, and Alpha’s data receptors bleeped as though he was agreeing wordlessly.  
"You call that not spying?! Stop it! Stoppit stoppit stoppit!!!"

Zack walked into Cassidy’s office with a confident attitude that immediately made the counselor worry that he would bounce off the walls like Kimberly had done earlier. Thankfully, he didn’t, but what he did do was almost worse. He started telling random stories at such speed that she could barely get a word in edgewise, and though the stories were in fact quite interesting- Cassidy noted his storytelling skill in her notes- they did not help her at all.  
"…so the sandbox was full of screaming kids and Jason’s younger sisters, who were trying to regain control over everything, but Zachariah kept running around flinging sand on everyone and we were standing around trying to figure out what the hell was going on but then Jason’s mom walked out and I swear everyone froze. It was insane. So then-"  
"God, Zachary, _answer my questions!"  
_ "Never! Oh, right, but that party was craaaaazy. And did I tell you about the way Billy woke us up at 4 AM on the trip? Gah! Why did that kid feel it was necessary? But there, that’s what you get from sticking a bunch of athletes and a musician with a complete and utter nerd in the same group!"  
" _Get. To. The. Goddamn. Point. Zachary. Taylor. Or I swear that I will kick you out of this room!"  
_ Zack grinned. "Okay, I never wanted to be here in the first place." Then he continued rambling on and on. "Go on, what are you waiting for?"  
A crackle over the PA shut both of them up at the moment that Cassidy was about to shove Zack out of his chair. "Students, this is your principal speaking. There is an attack going on several blocks away from the school, so you will be guided to the gym. Stay there until further notice. I repeat, _stay there_. We will let your parents know as soon as possible."  
Zack cursed under his breath and scrambled out of the armchair. "Gotta go, see you, bye!"  
Cassidy sighed as the door slammed behind him. This had been one of the most intense days of her life, hands down. Most of the kids who had come in had had far too much attitude, with notable exceptions being Jason Scott and Laurie Shiba, both from 10b. She had been particularly surprised by Jason, considering that he was one of the five kids who got lost and the one who confronted the scorpion lady on the bus, whereas Laurie had an oddly strong obsession with samurai and kept herself under full control. After pondering her day for a bit, she got up and headed for the gym. She may as well continue working there.

Zack encountered the other three in the hall, racing towards the doors. He joined them, yanking his morpher out as he ran, and created a portal on the wall catty-corner to the door out of the school, which Trini was the first to dash through. Kim and Jason followed, and Zack went through last, nearly crashing into Jason, who had frozen just a couple of feet in front of the gate, which spiralled shut behind them.  
"Billy's here!"  
"What?"  
"No, really! Look!"  
Billy was standing next to Alpha, his hand clenched into a fist as he examined a paper. "Hey, this might actually work! It's so much more efficient than a classic combustion engine- I've been trying to puzzle out ion drive engines for years, but this is even better!"  
"Ai-yi-yi! Remember that ion drive and plasma propulsion engines don’t work in Earth’s atmosphere!" Alpha replied. "You can't build a car with that type of engine!"  
Kim coughed slightly. "What's going on here?"  
Both Billy and Alpha whirled around, and Zordon looked up in alarm- if a hologram could be said to look up, that is. "What's going on?"  
"Monster attack, a few blocks away from school. We came here to trace the attack," Trini blurted out, making Zack facepalm and making Zordon curse under his breath in an unfamiliar language.  
"It is as I feared. They've started."  
"What?!"  
"Rita and Zedd are not frontline fighters. They prefer to send out genetically modified battlers, as they tend to refer to them, though they are simply mutated monstrosities that should never have existed- but that's beside the point. They send them out to do their dirty work for them, and I'm certain that this is one of their fighters. Whether it's Rita's or Zedd's… that remains to be seen."  
"Okay." Jason nodded sharply, pulled out his morpher, then looked back at Alpha. "What am I supposed to say again?" Fractions of a second later, he heard the sharp _thwap_ of skin hitting skin as the others facepalmed. Even Billy, who didn't want to do it at all.  
"It's 'It's morphin time!', Jason!" Everyone groaned.  
The red ranger winced. "I forgot… Oh, hell with it. Guys, it's morphin time!"  
"Mastodon!"  
"Pterodactyl- wait, what? Why isn't this working?" Kim scowled at her power coin.  
"That's a pteranodon, not a pterodactyl," Billy noted. "The crest should have given it away. Oh, and Trini, it’s technically a saber-toothed cat. The tiger thing is a misnomer. Though I guess maybe smilodon could work?"  
"Fine! Pteranodon!"  
"Smilodon!"  
"Tyrannosaurus!"  
Everyone turned to look at Billy. "You coming?"  
Billy blinked for a long moment, then sighed. "Fine. Triceratops!"  
Jason double-checked the map on the table, mentally coordinating himself, and held out his hand to open a portal. He jumped through, and started running straight at the monster- because that's what it was, all right- but then he tripped over a box of file folders that somebody must have dropped in their escape and went crashing to the ground. "Shit!"  
Trini, who had stopped to help him up, could not believe her ears. "Language!"  
"Darned helmet, limits my vision!" Jason added a few more curses as he struggled up and reached for his sword- only to remember that the sword wasn't there. Instead, his hand met the sleek metal of a blaster, and when he pulled it out of the holster, the silvery parts gleamed and the turquoise emblems sparkled from within, almost as if the power of the grid was shining through them. "Wow…"  
Zack, who had joined them, whistled. " _Noice!_ Now that's a pretty weapon!"  
"Yep, it is."  
Kim and Billy appeared behind them as though by magic, and Kim pulled out her blaster as well. "Ready guys?"  
"I guess?" Billy winced. "God, my ears hurt!" He put his hands on the helmet as though he were trying to cover his ears, but, of course, it wasn't helpful- because his ears were inside the helmet.  
"You okay?"  
"No! No! Stop talking!"  
Jason sighed. "Zordon? Any explanation?" he asked the air, not expecting a response, but Zordon replied promptly.  
"Possibly the inbuilt communications system. I didn't consider how it would affect someone who is more auditorily sensitive, so it's likely that he is feeling the pain of having someone speaking directly in his ear at full volume. I’ll have Alpha lower the default volume for his communicator." It seemed as though Zordon was about to launch into a more technical explanation, but Zack cut him off with a yell as he charged off to fight.  
Everyone groaned, then followed him.  
Jason skidded to a halt next to Kim and started blasting away at the monster, which, as he looked closer, looked like a cross between the Hulk, one of those creepy anglerfish, and Frankenstein’s monster. A tentacle was waving over its enormous mouth with some sort of glowy orb on its end, the whole thing was green and muscular, and it appeared to have been sewn togethe- nope. He was not going to think about that because he did not want to vomit in his helmet.  
The monster opened its mouth wide and exhaled noisily. A wave of stinky air hit them all, knocking them back a few steps, and the stench was so gross that Jason gagged and had to remove his helmet. Bad choice. The smell was even worse out of the helmet. He was about to throw up when a screechy voice behind them yelled out in a language that did not sound even remotely human, as though it had gone hypersonic at some point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations for the Spanish in the chapter:  
> ¿Que pasó, hermana?--What's going on, sis?  
> ¡¿Que?!--What?!  
> ¡Dios, soy tan idiota!--God, I'm such an idiot!
> 
> Hey guys!  
> EEEEEEE!!! 51 READS!!! You guys are the absolute best!!! We love you all!  
> Nobody's posted on the reference challenge yet... 😭 Please, at least try! You can't give up without trying! Otherwise, what's the point of being a PR fan, for whom "Never give up" is the fandom motto?  
> Love, SpringStar186 and greenmoon830


	6. Can’t stop, won’t stop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, back to your regularly scheduled MMPRR chapters now that Pride Month is over. This is the continuation of the battle that started in "To the counselor we go" - hope you enjoy!

"Who…?" Jason turned around and spotted a pale, slightly fat person-alien?- who had pale sea-blue markings down her arms and over her forehead, white hair coiled into cone-like structures, and a dark brown dress with a high collar. Her eyes- slanted, like East-Asian eyes- were glowing in a ghostly pale green, and she was glaring at all those present. She resembled Zordon, in a way. They had similar slender facial features, similarly slanted eyes, and- from what he'd seen, though that wasn't much, considering that Zordon's hologram was only of his head- similar markings. Whether they were tattoos or genetic marks, he had no idea.  
Billy was also staring at the person. "Hey, Zordon, any explanation as to who this is?"  
 _"Rita…"_ Zordon's sigh rang in their helmets. _"It's her."_ Billy winced, dizzy from all the noise in his ears.  
"Great, so that's Rita right there- and where's that other guy? The one whose name begins with a z?" Kim taunted, looking at the woman with undisguised scorn.  
"We're still rookies, dammit! Why the hell do we need to face Rita right now?" Zack groaned, shaking his head and punching the wall next to him.  
Trini grabbed his arm. "Shut up, I got this. At least, I think I do." Her daggers shimmered into existence, and she threw one of them at Rita. A few feet away from her, a force field sprang into existence and deflected the dagger into a wall, where it stuck, quivering.  
She retrieved her dagger before anyone could blink. "How on earth did she do that? That's impossible!"  
Zack snorted. "If it's so impossible, then why can Billy do it too?"  
Rita tossed a snide-sounding comment in the same alien language as before in their direction, which meant that they obviously couldn’t understand what she was saying, an annoying inconvenience. It sounded like she was berating them for something.  
"What the hell did she just say?" Kim's voice trembled slightly, and she was gripping her blaster as though it were a flotation device in the middle of a stormy ocean, but she attempted to appear as though she were keeping her cool. That was one of the things Jason liked about her- she didn't let her emotions get the better of her when it really counted.  
"Is there any way I can learn this language?" Billy threw the question out, not expecting an answer.  
 _"She said, 'Did you really think you could hurt me? Me, the great space'- there is no English word for this, but I believe the closest would be 'sorceress'. Billy, it's really quite flattering to me that you want to learn Eltarian. I’m glad you're starting to get used to the idea of being a ranger."_ Zordon's translation made everyone shiver.  
"What?! No I don’t!! I just love languages…" Billy’s words trailed off, for once in his life caught off guard verbally.  
A few very colorful curse words came from behind them, and the three rangers at the front turned to see Jason with his hand clamped over his nose. Another muffled phrase came out, sounding much like Jason’s mom’s favorite cuss- "Le-azazel!"  
Jason swore again- something that sounded oddly like "ducking gambit"- and shoved his helmet back on. "Zordon, if I end up throwing up, is there some kind of filter to clean up the mess?"  
 _"What is throwing up?"  
_ "You don’t know?" Jason grimaced. "Well, I’ll spare you the gross details, but throwing up is when a human’s digestive system basically reverses direction and makes the semi-digested food return to the mouth."  
Zordon sounded nauseated when he replied. _"Okay, I did not need to know that… I did not plan for that, but I’ll have Alpha add something."  
_ "While you’re at it, have him add some sort of translator!" Zack yelled, somersaulting over one of Rita’s attacks.  
The space sorceress held up her hand, and a silvery staff carved with crescents and a stylized lightning bolt- a bō-staff, Jason realized with some surprise- materialized in her palm. Whether it was actually silver or a different metal made no difference to him. He pulled his sword out of nowhere, and, reholstering the blaster, charged at her.

The monster behind them was about to release another blast of stink, but Kim caught him on the dangly thing with a well-aimed shot from her blaster. She jumped into the air, kicked the monster’s head, and insulted him from her vantage point, giving Trini an opportunity to slash him at high speed.  
"Ranger girls!" The grins on their faces were apparent despite the helmets hiding them. If there was one thing they knew, it was that this monster would not be able to keep up with them for long… Or so they thought until it enveloped them in another stink wave.  
"Holy God on a mountain high above!" Zack’s interesting choice of curse made Trini wince. "Can’t you stop it from doing that?"  
"No, we can’t!" Kim retorted, her vision growing blurry as she attempted to breathe normally.  
"You should shoot at him!" Jason yelled as he deflected Rita’s staff. "Get it in the mouth!"  
"Don’t you think I tried that?"Kim yelled exasperatedly as she hit the ground. "I tried everything!"  
Billy looked up with a sigh. "Your bow, damnit! We have weapons for a reason!" The blue lance-trident thingy- it was probably some sort of Eltarian weapon, Billy decided- appeared in a shimmer of cyan light and he ran in, thrusting it into the weapon lock Jason had Rita’s staff in.  
"You’re right! I completely forgot!" Kim slapped herself and grabbed the rose-and-silver bow that had just appeared slung over her back. An arrow appeared on the bowstring when she drew it back, glowing in a steady pink light that made her think that it was some sort of explosive, or otherwise special, arrow. She focused, aiming just above the monster’s lower lip, and the arrow landed straight in its mouth.  
Trini dashed in, so fast that only a blur could be seen, and stabbed it in the stomach and then in the eye. "And that's how we beat everyone," she remarked with a cheesy little salute that made Kim crack up.  
"You get the easy one! We’re dealing with Rita!"  
"You want to switch?"  
Rita commented something with what sounded like a laugh and turned on the girls.  
"What the hell did she say?" Billy asked, scrambling up from the ground.  
" _She said: ‘Fighting against the girls sounds more interesting. You’re boring me. I'm moving to them. They are stronger- after all, they beat Goldar.’_ " Zordon translated.  
"Ouch, her words hurt more than her attacks!" Zack said, offended.  
Kim attempted to laugh. "See, we- uhhffff- are better than you!"  
"Wait, if she knows English, then why doesn't she speak to us normally?" Billy asked.  
" _I have no idea how she knows it, she is not supposed to know any Earthen languages_." Zordon seemed to sink into thought, and Alpha took his place on the comm system.  
 _"Ai-yi-yi! I didn’t know that Earth was one of the planets on which the girls are stronger than the boys,"_ the android noted.  
The girls laughed even harder, still fending off Rita. "I suggest that you don't react to that, boys," Trini told them, sticking out her tongue and accidentally licking her helmet. "Ew!"  
"Can you give us an example for a planet like that, Alpha?" Kim asked, smirking, as she cartwheeled away from the space sorceress and shot an arrow at her.  
 _"Ai-yi-yi, let me think about that… Yes, Aquitar- the female warriors far outnumber the male ones,"_ Alpha replied without missing a beat.  
"Heck yeah!" Trini zipped behind Rita and attempted to deliver an elbow strike between the sorceress's shoulder-blades, only to be foiled when she spun gracefully out of the way. At the same time, Kim dodged a swipe from Rita's staff and, flying up to a nearby porch, started arrow-sniping at the monster and Rita. The arrows directed at Rita all bounced off an overhead force field, so she gave up and directed her attention to those aimed at the monster.  
"I could use some help, you know!" Trini yelled exasperatedly, attempting to hold her own against Rita, and Jason turned away from the creature he was fighting in order to run over and block a powerful overhand strike.

A few minutes later, the monster was lying on the ground with numerous arrow wounds while all the rangers were trying to fend off rapid blows from Rita’s staff. Jason, spotting an opening, dove to the ground in an attempt to tackle Rita off guard, but Zack got in the way and he had to abort, punching the ground instead, which- to his surprise- caused what seemed like a miniature earthquake.  
Rita let out a few words that definitely weren’t polite in any language out there, and pointed her staff in the monster’s direction. “Korgeto sok-hilma aiboaraenu!” Then she slammed her staff into the already-cracked asphalt and disappeared in a flash of light.  
Trini let out a sigh. “Of course she can make her monsters grow… Just great.”  
The giant monster loomed over them, shading the entire block. Zordon cursed over the comm, and several small objects appeared in front of them. “I’d hoped that she hadn’t learned how to do that…”  
Billy was staring at the monster with both curiosity and horror. “How’d she do that? That defies the square-cube law in its entirety!” Then he winced when the black ranger slapped him on the back.  
“Oh, to hell with the square whatever law! The question is how do we fight it?”  
 _“Vytoroonthga!”_ Zordon sounded like he was cursing, and no one could blame him. _“I forgot to explain how the zords work, didn’t I?”  
_ “Yup. You should definitely explain what zords are first, though.”  
 _“Look down on the ground. The zords should be there."  
_ “Hey, how’d that get here?”  
 _“Okay, each of you grab your animal and touch it to the coin. Then back off- fast. They’ll grow so you can fight against the monster.”  
_ Billy rolled his eyes. "You could explain how these defy the square-cube law while you're at i- whoa!" The tiny triceratops figurine weighed far more than he was expecting, and he nearly dropped it. “Okay, what is this thing even made of?”  
“Woohoo!!!” Kim tossed the pteranodon up in the air and squealed with delight when it enlarged to a ten-yard-long mecha. It was strange-looking, shaped like a slightly sleeker version of an extended star-shaped flyer, and certain areas diverged from the metallic silver and pink scheme with a semi-transparent pink.  
“How do we get inside this thing? Where is the door? Are we supposed to climb up? If yes, then what about Kim? What does she do?” Jason tilted his head quizzically as he tossed the miniature t-rex out and watched it grow into a forty-foot behemoth.  
“I can’t climb this thing!” Trini looked around indignantly, dwarfed by the mechanical saber-tooth that stood around four times her height.  
“I don’t think it’s physically possible to climb that thing… How the hell are the physics working here?!” Billy shook his head rapidly and attempted to clamber up the leg of his triceratops. He couldn’t get a grip, though, and fell flat on his butt.  
“Oh, man!” Kim doubled over and started laughing like a maniac, but then felt something strange tingling across her and stopped. Her next words were in a hushed whisper: “Do you guys feel that?”  
“Feel what?” Zack asked, attempting to scratch his neck. The itching he felt increased, and then, to everyone's surprise, colored beams of light extended from the zords, dragging them inside. “Ouch!” the black ranger complained as he crashed into the side of the mastodon, having squirmed around during the ride and not quite reached the hatch. The beam of light wouldn't let him fall, though, and he managed to grab on to the opening and pull himself inside. He glanced around before pulling his head in; all his friends were inside except Kim, who had also missed the hatch and was now using her ability to fly to get there.  
"Maybe you should just fly there, you know?" Trini called. "Don't rely on whatever this is."  
“Sure. Gives me an excuse to fly, at any rate,” Kim answered as she landed in the cockpit. "Well, dangit if this isn't the best thing ever!"

When Zack reached the cockpit of his zord, excitement hit the roof. “Woah, it’s like a video game! This is so awesome!” He grabbed one of the levers and shoved it into an open position before running his fingers over all the buttons and flipping any switch he could find.  
Billy refused to sit down, pacing back and forth in front of the controls and trying to figure out how the hell he got in there. “Electromagnetic traction beam? But then how were they directed so accurately? This doesn't make sense!”  
“This is so cool! It’s like being in a sentai mecha!” Trini was in total fangirl mode, and, thanks to her love of the Japanese toku shows, she figured out how to make it do what she wanted pretty easily. “This looks like the cockpits from Go-Busters. I'm pretty sure that it wasn't intentional, but who knows?" She pushed the zord forward and tackled the monster, a grin spreading across her face as her favorite senshi came to mind- the green chameleon-themed ranger, Hammie, from Kyuranger.  
Jason, on the other hand, had no clue what he was supposed to be doing, and ended up just staring, puzzled, at the buttons.  
After Kim settled in, she started flying in lazy circles and looking at the view, much to Zordon's annoyance.  
 _“Rangers, you need to fight against the monster- it’s not a game!”_ the Eltarian yelled exasperatedly.  
"Damnit! I'm done!" Billy was honestly sick and tired of the ringing in his ears. Alpha having lowered the volume for his communicator helped, but it wasn't perfect- not by a long shot. He ended up taking the helmet off so the ringing would just get out of his ears, and then plopped in the chair next to the console to think about the insane physics of what was going on  
“Roger that!" Zack called playfully, shooting in every possible direction and only once hitting the monster. To nobody's surprise, Kim ignored everything and started flying loop-the-loops.  
“Zordon, I know that this is bad, but I can't figure out how to make this thing move. And without that, I can't fight.” Jason looked around at the cockpit, searching for intelligible instructions- because the labels were all in Eltarian, which looked like a weird combination of Japanese katakana and Arabic- but there were none to be found.  
Trini looked over at Jason's zord, singing the Kyuranger theme song for the second- or perhaps third, she wasn't sure- time that day. "Surun nara we go… The joystick thing makes it go in the direction of the joystick! Kono sekai niwa sorezore tsuzuku…"  
“Hey Trini, do you think there's a stereo setup for this?" Kim's question made Trini abandon fighting the monster and go search for a music player.  
"Thanks for the idea!"  
"Is there a bathroom in here?"  
"ZACK!"  
Zordon sighed. Teenagers- what had he been expecting? Especially teenagers with attitude, like these ones. They were bound to be trouble.

“Idiots!” Jason slumped in his chair, trying to figure out how to convince the other rangers to get their crap together and fight the monster. This, of course, belying the fact that Jason himself had no idea what he was doing. A few minutes later, a thud echoed through the streets, and he sprang up, startled. “What the hell was that?”  
Billy panicked and covered his ears instinctively. “Zordon, you didn’t tell us that being rangers would be so loud!” Then he realized that because he wasn’t wearing his helmet, the others couldn’t hear him. “Damnit.”  
Trini pushed a lever forward and the saber-tooth zord pounced- the sort of pounce that left it flailing because the monster wasn’t where she expected. “Guys, the monster collapsed…”  
“Well, that’s great! You destroyed it!” Kim laughed gleefully, sending her zord into a slow descent.  
“No, it just collapsed all of a sudden. I don't think it’s dead.”  
“Who the hell cares? We won!” Zack cheered, throwing himself into a surprise set of dance moves.  
Zack’s voice carried through, making Billy realize that something had happened. With a groan, he gave up and put his helmet back on. “What’s going on?’  
“We won!” Kim answered cheerfully.  
“No we didn’t, the monster just fell over,” Trini corrected, wincing.  
“You said it fell over?”  
“Yep.”  
“So the square-cube law finally caught up with it, huh… Interesting that the monster obeys the laws of physics better than the mechas.” Billy turned to Zordon with the second part, but Zordon simply ignored him.  
“Hey, we need to finish him off!” Trini yelled. Everyone except Jason ignored her, and she groaned. “Whyyyyy?”  
“What do I do? How do I do this?” Jason looked around frantically at the buttons then leaned his head on the metal control panels.  
 _“Hit the big blue button. That’s the finisher,”_ Zordon supplied.  
Trini was quicker on her feet and she hit the blue button before Jason. To her surprise, the fangs of her zord extended until they locked onto the monster. A rumbling that lasted about a minute made her frown, and then the sliding sound of a liquid rushing through pipes made her even more confused. “What was that? What did I just do?” The fangs retracted as she spoke, leaving a pair of small holes in the monster’s side.  
 _“Trini, your zord just injected a large amount of nitroglycerin into the monster. It’s very explosive, so the next hit should blow it. Jason, you're up,”_ Zordon explained before making the blue button in the red ranger’s cockpit light up.  
“Nitroglycerin? That thing is majorly dangerous!” Billy exclaimed, having only caught that word. “Be careful, you guys!”  
“Alright. So all I need to do is just press the blue button? Isn’t that too easy?” Jason asked, hand poised to push.  
“Just do it!”  
Jason hit the blue button and laser beams exploded out of the T-rex’s eyes, targeting the monster automatically. The dangly thing that had made him think of an anglerfish ignited, and then, when the flames reached the main part of the body, it exploded.  
“Now we won!” Kim called.  
“ **We?** Jason and I did all the work! You three didn’t do anything!” Trini retorted angrily, folding her arms.  
“The important thing is that the monster is down. One-zero to the Power Rangers. Now how do we get out of here? I really need to pee.”  
“ZACK!!”

Just about a quarter of an hour later, they reassembled in the Command Center, freshly demorphed- and in Zack’s case, freshly relieved- and still running on a major adrenaline high. Kim and Trini were bouncing off the walls, and in Kim’s case, that was literal. Jason had his hands full trying to get them to calm down.  
“The battle is over. Can’t we go already?” Billy glanced around warily, still not pleased to be there.  
“No, you can’t go. I get the feeling that some of you have some questions, so… shoot,” Zordon replied, his pale blue eyes darting from Jason to Zack to Trini.  
“Why did she have those blue blotches on her face?”  
“Why does the staff have so many crescents on it?  
“How on Earth do we make the zords move?”  
 _“What the hell are the physics of all of this?”_ Billy shrieked, making all the others freeze on the spot for a moment before trying to stifle laughter, some more successfully than others.  
Zordon took it in stride. “You know what? Go ask Alpha, because I have no more idea about the physics of this than any of you.” This made everyone crack up, even Billy. They all found Zordon’s straight face downright hilarious.  
“As for your questions… Rita chose the crescent as her symbol a long time ago, so maybe she used her staff to keep track of time while she was trapped. The blue blotches, as you called them, are a mark of sexual maturity among our kind, so they basically mean that she’s fertile.”  
Trini made a face, and Zack responded with the same, then started laughing. “It's like a period that everyone sees,” he joked.  
“ZACK!!!!!!”  
“Not funny!” Kim punched him exasperatedly. “You don’t joke about things like that!”  
“Whoa there!” Jason stepped in between the two, hands outstretched. “Let Zordon finish.”  
The Eltarian sighed. “It appears for both genders, actually, so they have the same meaning for me as they have for her. I was in my nineties when I chased her down. Anyway, Alpha will install a translator in your helmets, so you’ll be able to read the instructions next time.”  
“Wait, you were in your _nineties???_ How old do you people get?” Billy turned from where he was discussing stuff with Alpha, eyes wide with surprise.  
“The average lifespan of my people is about 25o years, and we reach maturity at 50, so I was around thirty on a human timescale.”  
“That’s cool,” Billy said shortly. Learning about aliens was definitely something that interested him, but he wasn’t planning to give Zordon the pleasure of him being excited about it. Then he turned back to Alpha, yanking off his sweatshirt and tying it around his waist.  
“Do you have any other questions?” Zordon queried, and nodded when Trini raised her hand..  
“Why do the mechas- I mean zords- why do they exist?”  
“The Morphin Grid is mysterious… Honestly, I don’t know, but this is not the first time that a villainous figure has drawn from the grid to enlarge monsters. They just exist within the coins… and before you ask, I withdrew them from the coins when you came in here earlier.” Zordon nodded to Alpha, and the robot brought over a tray. “We’ve formed them into a more innocuous version, so you can carry them around with you wherever you go.”  
“Keychains! This is awesome, dude!” Zack squealed as he spun the tiny mastodon around his finger. It weighed no more than a few ounces, which, compared to its earlier version, was beyond light.  
“What did you do with them? How did you make them so light? It doesn’t make sense! You can’t just change the mass of an object! That’s not how the law of conservation of mass-energy works!” Billy protested, gripping the keychain so hard that his hand shook.  
“Ai-yi-yi-yi-yi! Rangers, you may have a problem.” Alpha beckoned to everyone after glancing at a hologram that had just popped up, saving Zordon from having to answer Billy.  
“Crap. My parents are already there! We gotta go go go!” Kim called, tugging her morpher out of her jeans and opening a portal.  
“Wait!” Zordon called, stopping all of them. “We need to figure out how to connect with each other.”  
The rangers looked at each other. “We can use Whatsapp.”  
“Whats-what?” Zordon asked, puzzled. His eyes scanned the room with a confused expression.  
“Whatsapp, it’s an app that allows people to communicate with one another. Hang on, I’m trying to download it to this table,” Billy said, tapping some buttons on the table. “Here, you just text what you want to tell us.”  
“Ai-yi-yi! Zordon, I really don’t think that this is a good idea!” Alpha countered.  
“Oh, who cares. It’s the best way we have, unless you have a better idea,” Kim retorted, the snark in her voice very evident. Then she turned and made for the portal. 

Four of the rangers dashed in the direction of their classroom the moment they exited the portal, but Billy ignored them and was wandering about the courtyard, searching for his parents. He’d had too many changes and triggers for one day, and he kind of needed to get away from the others.  
“Ow!”  
While he was daydreaming, he’d accidentally crashed into a dark-haired girl who was standing nearby, reading, knocking her glasses to the ground.“Watch where you're going!” Billy snarled.  
“Uh, excuse me? You’re the one who bumped into me!” the girl retorted angrily, retrieving her glasses and smacking him in the shoulder with her book.  
A glimpse of the book was all it took for him to forget he’d been angry. “You also like Stephen Hawking’s book? Are you also a physics lover?” he asked with a smile.  
“Yes, I do. And yes, I like physics, though I prefer chemistry,” she answered coldly, still glaring at him. “You're that smart kid who skipped a year, aren’t you? Billy, right?”  
“How do you know that?” Billy asked, shocked.  
Laughter from behind them made both of them turn around, the girl cursing under her breath. Jason was standing there, doubled over with laughter, along with another redhead, a girl, who appeared about his age or maybe slightly older. “So I see you’ve met my little sister, huh? What do you think, Beryl?”  
“Dahlia can handle herself. I think she’s good.”  
“So, yeah, as you just heard, I’m Dahlia. One of Jason’s younger sisters. Jason’s mentioned you.”  
“ _What?!_ Why were you talking about me?” Billy yelled at Jason, beginning to pace up and down the courtyard.  
“Whoa there, Billy-boy! Over here!” someone shouted. Billy was grateful to see that it was David, since he was kind of having a Scott overload.  
“Bye, I gotta go!” Billy called and ran off, but the Scotts followed him at a slower pace, and only once he got near David did he understand why. A tall young woman was standing next to his older brother, her elbow resting playfully on his shoulder and her bobbed strawberry-blonde hair bouncing. “Wait! Why are you here and not one of our parents? And _who_ is this girl?” Billy was really tired by now and his brain was overloading.  
“This is Ariel, she’s a psychology student at the university. We’re doing a research project together.” David shoved Ariel’s elbow off him and she pushed him back before both of them grinned.  
“Oh hey Ariel, so you’re picking us up?” Beryl called as she jogged over, with Jason and Dahlia tagging along.  
“Wait. You know her too? How many people do you know???” Billy freaked out, cupping his face in his hands and screaming. He was on the verge of a breakdown.  
“She’s also my sister,” Jason explained, looking like he was about to crack up again.  
“ _What?_ ” Billy stared at all the girls, looking back and forth from one to another. “How many sisters do you have?”  
“Too many.”  
“Jason!” all three of the girls scolded.  
“Fine! I have five sisters and a younger brother.”  
“I’m actually not here to pick you up. You three are going home with the Taylors. I have an assignment with David here, who, apparently, is the brother of one of your friends,” Ariel finally answered, gathering her three younger siblings in for a hug.  
“We. Are. Not. Friends!” Billy slammed a fist into his other hand, then grimaced. “Ow.”  
“This again? Haven’t we finished with that?” Zack teased as he approached, making finger guns and pointing them at Billy.  
“Well, Zack’s here, so you should probably go.” Ariel ruffled Jason and Dahlia’s hair, then directed them to the gate. She didn’t know David’s brother very well, and the situation was starting to get awkward.  
“Yeah, come on!” Zack called with a smirk. “Race you to the car!” The three younger Scotts and Zack took off at a sprint toward the gates without looking back.  
“So, Billy, where’s your backpack?” David asked gently.  
“Dammit! It’s still in the library!” Billy realized, making a beeline for the doors of the school.  
David sighed. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled to Ariel. “He’s autistic, and I guess today was an overwhelming day for him. Not that that says much,” he added jokingly. “He can get overwhelmed by large crowds.”  
“What’s the diagnosis? PDD-NOS? Classical autism? Asperger’s?” Ariel’s eyes brightened. The conversation had turned in the direction of her area of expertise.  
“Asperger’s, I think, but I’m not the expert. Billy is a crazy fanatic when it comes to learning stuff.”

“Oh, hija, there you are!” Kim’s mother smiled when she saw her daughter and Trini waiting by the car. “Hola, Trini!”  
“Hola, Señora Hart!” Trini replied with a grin. “So Mamá’s gone to pick up Seb, eh? I have so many things to tell him!”  
“I believe so. Should I just drop you off at tu casa? Or do you want to come home with us?”  
“Dropping me at home is fine. I want to be there when Sebastian gets home.” Trini fist-bumped Kim as she got into the car, and, as always, was impressed by how clean the Harts kept their car. “Has Mamá been helping you with the legalization stuff?”  
“Oh, yes. Señora Reyes has been very helpful with the process. I think that we might have it all cleared up by the end of the year, in fact.”  
“Mamá, that’s awesome!” Kim cheered and shared a grin with Trini. Having the legality required for her parents to remain in the USA would mean that all the danger of their worst dreams would fade into nothing. Thinking about what could be, though, made her nervous, and the rest of the car ride was spent in a nerve wracking silence.

Trini skipped up the driveway to the empty house, unlocked the door, and ran inside. Her feet skidded on the smooth tile, and she ended up falling and laughing. It had been several weeks since she’d seen Seb, since he’d left for therapy camp nearly a week before her field trip, but their mom had had some time by herself, which they both knew she appreciated as a single mother with three kids. So many things had happened to her in the past week- obviously she couldn’t tell him about being a ranger, but meeting an alien who looked like Stinger from Kyuranger was definitely a big deal for her, and her brother was the only one she knew who could appreciate her enthusiasm about it.  
After an hour of her zipping around the house, tossing balls around, playing with a kendama, making an attempt at doing her homework, practicing her guitar, and holding a wrestling match with a couch cushion- which she lost- the door finally opened. She raced to the entrance and launched a flying tackle-hug at Sebastian, who nearly fell out of his wheelchair because of it.  
“Hey hermanita, rumor is you’re an alien fighter now, huh?” he asked between giggles. Trini released him from the hug and wheeled the chair to the living room while their mom went into the kitchen to start making dinner.  
“No, no, I didn’t fight an alien. That was all Jason. _But_ that is _not_ the point. You won’t believe what she looked like! I will tell you this, though- she looked like an alien from Sentai. Start guessing,” Trini told him and collapsed on the couch. Then she realized that the cushion was still on the floor. “Oops…”  
“Ooh, that’s tough… Let me think.” He pressed his fingers to his temple in mock concentration. “Oh, I know- Stinger! You know that that was broadcast on YouTube, right?” Sebastian laughed and embraced his sister.  
“I forgot about that…” Trini mumbled. “Anyway, the alien who was on the bus was from the same race as him! It was so cool! She had a golden scorpion tail with actual venom!”  
“You know that it’s really weird that you’re fangirling about that and not freaking out, right?” Seb raised an eyebrow.  
“What can I say? I _am_ a total fangirl.”  
“So the stingers of the scorpion aliens have different colors?”  
“Looks like it- Scorpina with a golden stinger, Stinger had orange and Scorpio had purple. She’s kind of like Scorpio if Scorpio was female- wow. They could have been such a cute ship!!! Oh, and she said the name of her planet at one point. It’s ‘Antaredia’, so I think that means that it’s in the Sasori system, aka the scorpion constellation.”  
“If you see her again you should ask her if she knows them!” Seb grinned, making his sister grin even wider.  
“Wait, why would I see her again? It’s not like I can just call her or something. But now I _really_ want to know if she knows them!”  
“D’you think she can use the Antares technique? That would be so cool!”  
“Yes, that’s right! Wait- no. She would kill the rangers and then die from it herself. It’s better if she just doesn’t use it, I mean, after all, she’s dangerous enough without it!” Trini shivered, nightmare images running through her mind.  
“You’re right- it is a bad idea. I don’t want these cool heroes to die.”  
Trini beamed. “So, who’s your favorite?”  
“The red one,” he replied after some thought.  
“ _What?_! But your favorite color is yellow!”  
“Yeah, but the red rangers are the leaders, and they are always the best and the strongest. Hey, I just realized that these rangers are basically a real live Super Sentai team! This is so cool!!!”  
“I’m sure the rest of the rangers have the same amount of power, unlike the sentai teams,” Trini snapped, slightly offended but also worried, because Seb was right- the red ranger always gets extra power compared to the rest of their team. _“I wonder if we’ll get upgrades to our powers at some point,”_ she thought, touching the saber-tooth cat keychain in her pocket.  
“All of this talking makes me want to see Kyuranger again,” Seb called as he reached for the remote, but Trini got to it first.  
“Of course that's what we’ll do!”  
“So, episodes 20 and 21? Because they are, after all, the Scorpio and Stinger-centric episodes.”  
 _“Oh yeah!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeesh, that was quite a crazy month! But, friends, MMPRR is back and we have some pretty insane twists in store, so stay tuned!  
> (25/8 edit: We have an image of Rita for you to see! https://www.deviantart.com/springstar335/art/Rita-MMPRR-853108707?ga_submit_new=10%3A1598354895 Have a look! She's pretty stunning if we do say so ourselves.)  
> Love y'all,  
> SpringStar2004 and greenmoon830


	7. Trini's Chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today is the last day of June, also known as Pride Month. So what better way to top off the month than with a bonus chapter about our proud lesbian yellow ranger, Trini Reyes?

“Hey, Trini, invitation to my birthday party. You’ll be coming, right?” Kira asked Trini after their music lesson ended, holding out a dark purple envelope with gold lettering.  
“Of course I’ll come!” Trini grinned and snatched the envelope out of her friend's hand. "Whyever wouldn't I?"  
“Great! You’ll have so much fun! I’m inviting the rest of our class tomorrow. See ya!” Kira called and ran off, leaving a wildly overjoyed Trini behind, staring at the envelope.

“So, are you ready for Kira's party? She's probably got something big planned,” Trini asked, legs swinging from the bench in the schoolyard.  
Kim smiled. “Yeah, I heard a rumor that this is a pool party. I can’t wait to show everyone my new pink bikini.”  
“Your mom allows you to wear bikinis? Oh my god, you are so lucky! Mamá would never allow me to wear anything like that.”  
Trini whacked the bench in frustration several times before Kim put a hand on her shoulder. “Your stupid bathing suit isn't going to stop you from having fun.” Her friend's genuine grin reminded Trini of the important things in life and made her smile too.  
“You're right.”

When Kim and Trini arrived at Kira’s house on the outskirts of Angel Grove, they were surprised to find out that her parents had let her do whatever she wanted for the party. There were about forty kids there in total, the pool was decorated with a bunch of strobe lights, and Kira's electric guitar was hooked up to a stereo. Trini wanted to go and play some music herself, but she decided to let Kira stay the center of attention- it was her birthday, and who was she to ruin it? Kira knew how to be the center of attention, too.  
Once everyone had arrived, Kira dragged them all into the pool for a water fight. Someone hit the switch on the stereo, and “Party Night” by Levi Weston, one of the most popular young musicians of the time, started playing. He'd just started dating Kira Ford, Kira’s favourite singer- because, of course, they have the same name- and rumor held that they were planning to release a song together.  
Kim, Zack, Trini and Jason ended up sticking in the corner, splashing each other and- at least for Kim and Jason- attempting to do water acrobatics, which involved Kim doing a lot of backflips and which ended up being a complete fail. They were singing along to "Shining like a Star" at the top of their lungs when Kira decided to drag everyone out of the pool for a game of truth or dare.

Everyone was dripping as they sat around the heater, allowing the heat to dry their clothes. Kira approached the center of the ring with what appeared to be a bottle contraption of some sort. "Does anyone care if the dares include kisses?” She waited one second. “Great, this will make for a very interesting game.”  
Kira placed the bottle contraption in the center of the circle and hit the button, which set the bottle to spinning. When it stopped, it was pointing at James Navarro. “Great. James, truth or dare?”  
“Truth,” James answered, a slight smirk ghosting across his face at Kira’s disappointed expression. She had obviously wanted to start the kissing part already.  
“Who do you like the most from the people here?” Kira asked, figuring that the most interesting thing she could come up with would reveal some stuff.  
“Jason. He’s a really nice and friendly guy to everyone, and besides, he protected my little bro Tyler in a fist fight,” James replied and smiled at Jason, who grinned back.  
Kira groaned. “That’s not what I meant.”  
“You asked who I like the most. It’s not like you specifically asked about romantic relationships in that truth question.” James laughed and Kira mentally facepalmed as she watched him get up and press the button to spin the bottle. It landed on Ryo Hoshikawa. “Truth or dare, Ryo?”  
“Dare!” Ryo called, jumping up excitedly.  
“Okay… I dare you to get up on the picnic table, crow like a rooster, then do a cannonball into the pool.”  
“Wow, I need to film this. Remi will split!” Daigo, Ryo’s twin brother, snatched Skull’s camera right out of his hands and turned it on. Both Ryo and Skull scowled at Daigo- Ryo was wearing a death glare- but the twin went to do his dare.  
When Ryo returned, sopping wet and with his hair in his eyes, he scrambled to spin the bottle and get back to where his brother was. The next victim was Jason. “Truth or dare?”  
“Dare.”  
“Go do the moonwalk in front of Kira’s dad.” Jason reddened completely- he was a horrifying dancer, but there, Ryo knew that- and went to the house and into the kitchen, where Kira’s parents were preparing burgers. Skull’s smile as he retrieved his camera and went inside to film the dare was the smile of someone who’d just found a basket full of blackmail material. Jason ignored him.  
“My boy, what are you doing?” Andrew, Kira’s dad, asked Jason with a bewildered look as he started dancing.  
“It was a dare. Blame Ryo Hoshikawa.” Jason explained quickly and went back to the circle. He could see Ryo attempting to strangle Daigo out of the corner of his eye as he spun the bottle. “Laurie, truth or dare?”  
“I really want a dare, but we should do some more truths, so I’ll go with a truth.”  
“Why do you hate Tom so much?” Jason raised an eyebrow and looked at the dark-haired boy who was glaring at him.  
“I… well… he’s bullying my brother Jayden and his friend Antonio, and they’re not even willing to try to stop him!” Laurie scowled in Tom’s direction, her dark eyes flashing with tears for a moment.  
“That is not cool, dude. They’re two years younger than you, what’s your basic problem?” Jason looked at Tom with ice in his eyes, smiling for a moment when he flinched.  
When Laurie spun the bottle it ended up pointing at Mia. “Truth or dare?"  
“Truth.”  
Laurie cast her gaze around, trying to think of a truth, and spotted a few silvery lines stretching across Mia’s shoulder. It was clear that the only reason they were visible was because of Mia’s one-piece bathing suit. “Uh, what are those marks on your shoulder?”  
“Oh, this?” Mia reached for her shoulder, wincing at the memory. “I accidentally crashed through a glass door when I was four. It was back when we lived in Philadelphia, and I had hoped that I could leave that story behind. I guess that didn’t work.” She shrugged and went over to the bottle in order to spin it. It pointed at Bulk. “Do I even need to ask you? Or can I just say the dare?”  
“Just say the dare.”  
“Do twenty push-ups.”  
“That’s easy, I thought you’d give me something harder!” He started cracking up and dropped down into a push-up position. Skull chuckled at Bulk’s words, then started laughing even harder when it became apparent that Bulk was having trouble. When he'd finished all twenty- a good four minutes later- he spun the bottle. “Marlena, truth or dare?”  
“Truth.”  
“Who would you want to go on a date with from the people here?” Bulk asked, hoping the answer would be him, because he thought that she was pretty.  
“Finally! The game just got interesting!” Kira called happily, pumping her fist.  
“I would probably choose one of the twins. Probably Daigo, though Ryo is also a great option. Problem is, I didn’t like his rooster voices.” She cracked up at the Hoshikawa twins' expressions, then spun the bottle.  
“Hey! No fair!” Ryo called, semi-offended, though admittedly also fairly amused.  
The bottle indicated that Ana was the next victim.  
“Truth or dare, Ana?”  
“Dare.”  
“You need to sing a song while standing on your head.”  
“Alright. Which song?”  
“ _I’m Over You_ by Kira Ford!” Kira jumped in before Marlena could answer with one of her own favorites.

“ _... You can say it again that you wanna be friends _

_ "But when we get to the end I'm mad _

_ "I'm over you _ .” 

Ana's sweet voice rang out over the yard, and she collapsed out of the headstand the moment the song ended.  
"Nice job, Ana!" Trini held out her hand for the redhead to hi-five as she returned to her spot, and Ana willingly obliged.  
"Angela, truth or dare?"  
"Truth."  
“Who is your best friend?” Ana's eyes were dancing at Kira's exasperation.  
“You, of course.” Angela winked at her and spun the bottle. Now it was Trini’s turn. “Truth or dare?”  
“Dare,” Trini announced. She wanted to prove herself to her friends, and besides, Ana’s dare wasn’t that bad- she should be able to do one too.  
They all waited with bated breath for Angela to say the dare, but she couldn’t think of one. “Sorry, I don’t have any ideas…”  
“Okay, so I’ll choose one instead. Trini, I dare you to kiss the boy who's sitting next to you.” Kira's grin was pure evil joy. She finally got to make someone do a kissing dare, and the best part about it was that Trini was sitting next to Zack, Angela’s crush. Kira had been eavesdropping on Angela and Ana when Angela had admitted that she had a crush on Zack Taylor, and now she had a chance to use that knowledge.  
Kira could get really vengeful, and in her opinion, Angela needed to pay somehow for saying that Ana was her best friend. Everyone here loved her, she was best friends with them all.  
Trini reddened and Zack busted out laughing, but that was nothing on Angela's reaction- she blushed so hard that they almost could see red on her dusky cheeks. She knew that Kira had done that on purpose- she had somehow known that Angela had a crush on Zack. Kira had always been mean, but this was on a new level.  
“Well, are you planning to do it or what?” Kira asked Trini, raising an eyebrow questioningly. Trini and Zack looked at each other hesitantly- one kiss couldn't be that bad. Zack had actually wanted to have a girlfriend for some time now. He wanted to have his first kiss already, and he'd known Trini for years, so her being his first kiss could actually work. They sidled up to each other and kissed, and everyone started cheering. They sat there like that for a minute or two- even Trini falling into Zack's lap didn't stop them- until Andrew walked out to the garden with the food and nearly dropped a burger.  
“Whoa, what the hell is going on? That is not something appropriate for two kids your age to be doing!”  
Trini and Zack broke apart immediately. “I'm sorry, it was a dare.” Zack was red with embarrassment, and Trini's hair was everywhere.  
“I think it’s time to end this game."  
Trini didn’t feel right after the kiss. It was weird, so unlike the way Ryan had described his first kiss. He had described it as having a tingle go down his spine, with a warmth filling his gut, whereas Trini felt completely hollow. Zack was glad that he'd had his first kiss, especially considering that everyone in their class had started to date- even just watching a movie together. Diane had been dating Leo for a month now, and as per usual, Kira had already gone to the movies with about half of the boys in the class. Everyone was starting to date- everyone except Trini, who had just realized that she had never actually imagined herself going out with a boy. Going to the movies with Kim? Sure. With a boy? Only as a friend group.  
Trini hadn't even noticed that the party had ended when Mei Hoshikawa, the twins' mother, came to pick her up along with Ryo and Daigo. Seb, Trini’s brother, was close with Remi, the twins' older sister, so Mei and Katrina knew each other and their families were close. That meant that when Katrina wasn't able to pick Trini up from something because of work, such as today, she'd hand it off to Mei, and vice versa.

The community center music class was always fun for Trini. This was her second year, and there was a new kid talking to Mary and Becky, two girls who, judging from the familiarity they spoke to him with, likely went to the same school as him. Trini was pretty fond of Becky- she was really nice, and sometimes Kira was just too much to be around, so they ended up hanging out together sometimes. Trini also saw them talking to Thuy, a friend of theirs from the kung-fu class, occasionally, and as far as she could tell, the young Korean immigrant was very nice as well.  
Dylan caught her eye not because he was talking to Becky and Mary, but because of his necklace- a small round pendant with a pride flag emblazoned on it. When she got a chance, Trini nudged Becky aside and gave her a quick apologetic smile.  
“Hey, I’m Trini. I like your necklace,” she said, flushing at the awkwardness.  
“Thanks. I’m Dylan,” he replied, holding his hand out for her to shake. “New kid here, you know. Oh, who’s that?”  
Trini spun around to see Kira walking in through the door, carrying her guitar case and holding her head high. Trini winced and tried to shy away from her- they’d gotten in an argument about guitars the week before- but Kira spotted her instantly, then found Dylan’s eyes and made a beeline for them.  
“Hey, I’m Kira. Kira Martin. I’m the best singer here, if I do say so myself. How about you sit next to me? I can be a very useful partner to guide you along…” She raised an eyebrow, then winked at him, making Trini grimace even more. Kira was basically flirting with the guy, completely ignoring the blatant clue that his necklace supplied.  
“I’m Dylan, nice to meet you.”  
“Hey Dylan. I’m sure you're a really talented musician.” Kira’s flirty smile was getting on Trini’s nerves. She was about to shove Kira away when Dylan interrupted her.  
“I think you're mistaken, I’m--” He stopped in the middle of his sentence when he saw the teacher waiting in the doorway. “Oh.” Kira took advantage of his momentary distraction to drag him to stand next to her.  
“Please gather around in a circle. Now, we’ll be going around, and each of you will introduce yourself, specify the instrument you play, and tell us your favorite song. I’ll go first. I’m Freddie Paul- that’s Mr. Paul to you- I play the saxophone and the piano, and my favorite song is ‘Rolling in the Deep’ by-” He paused, letting everyone yell out the name of the artist.  
“ADELE!”  
“Correct. Now, let’s start from our newest participants.”  
“I’m Dylan Ross, I play the piano and electric keyboard, and my favorite song is one that I wrote myself,” he answered shortly, trying to twist his wrist out of Kira’s grip.  
“Would you like to play this song for us?”  
“Sure.” He finally freed himself from Kira and walked over to the piano, his fingers floating over the keys. The opening bars chimed out, and Dylan closed his eyes, clearly enjoying the feeling. “The name of this song is ‘Being Different’.”

_ “Life is such a mysterious thing _

_ We never know what's happening _

_ We don’t know what the future will bring _

_ “You know life only gives you one chance _

_ Don’t let it pass you in a trance _

_ Let your pride carry you in this dance _

_ “It is not a mistake to be bizarre _

_ You can think whatever, be whoever _

_ Always wish to be who you are _

_ Because love will always be forever _

_ “Everyone else is careful, always _

_ Because they think that life’s effect stays _

_ Afraid of the ruin, they live in a daze _

_ “But being different won’t ruin your life _

_ It is far too short to live with regrets _

_ Living on the rainbow shouldn’t have to cause strife _

_ How to be yourself is something that everyone forgets.” _

Trini had to hold back her laughter when she saw Kira’s jaw drop, having finally connected the dots between Dylan’s necklace and the song. The "living on the rainbow" lyric was what had clinched it. Trini herself found the song to be beautifully written and quite impressive in its phrasing.  
When Dylan got up from the piano bench, he didn't return to his position next to Kira, rather shoving his way between Mary and Becky, who were smiling- whether they were really smiling or actually smirking, Trini couldn't tell. Either way, it pissed Kira off.  
When the class finished, Trini caught Dylan on his way out. “I really loved your song. It was very touching.”  
“Thanks. I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Dylan's smile lit up his whole face, and his smile widened into a smirk as Kira walked by.  
“If you don't mind me asking, where you are on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum?” Trini bit her lip, hoping for an answer.  
“I’m gay.” His answer was short and to the point, like the other times when it was obvious that he really didn't want to answer- except now he was smiling.  
“Cool. I'm lesbian, I think, but I guess I'm still in the closet about it.”  
“Huh. Why are you in the closet?”  
"My family is Catholic, and-" Trini broke off, spotting her mom's car on the street. "Oh, I gotta go! See you next time, Dylan!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was a rollercoaster! We know that Pride Month is nearly over, but we should always remember what this month teaches us. Tolerance, acceptance and diversity- and especially with the current events. The Stonewall Riots were started by African-American trans women, creating what we now know as LGBTQIA+ pride, and now, as Pride Month comes to an end, we need- more now than ever- to protect the other people in our lives, who may not be as lucky as we are. #blacklivesmatter  
> We love you all,  
> SpringStar2004 and greenmoon380


	8. Teenage Juice Drama

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is published in memory of Thuy Trang, who was killed in a car accident 19 years ago.

“What the hell are those?” An unfamiliar African-American woman stared around, eyes landing on a group of blue figures. “Splash? Console? Dao? We may have a problem.”  
“Roger that, Fusilli, I’ll be right over.” A voice buzzed from the communicator, and sure enough, a blonde woman with the sleek physique of a swimmer leaped over the boulder and landed in a crouch. Two more people crept around the sides a moment later- one East-Asian with dark hair cropped short, and one with a light tan and spiky hair. “What’s the sitch, Aisha?”  
“Those guys.” Aisha pointed at the blue figures, who had gotten nearer, and could now be recognized as… _blue rangers?_  
Billy woke up with a start. His room was pitch black, and when he looked at the glowing dial of his watch, he saw that it was just past 2 am. Another nightmare. The black woman had a familiar name, and for once he knew why. Aisha was the name of his Pakistani cousin whom he sometimes wrote letters to- the daughter of his mother’s sister. Aisha was not a common name in the USA, so why did it feel so normal that the woman in the hallucination was named that? He shook his head, rolled over, and went back to sleep. He'd think about it more in the morning.

"Rise and shine, dodo!" His dad shook him awake at nine, as was his habit on Sundays. No school meant that he could help him with some more complex repairs, at least usually- but today one of Billy's friends had dropped by to invite him to hang out at Ernie's Juice Bar, the local youth hangout. Billy, of course, wasn’t a big fan of the idea, but his parents were still very excited about him having friends, and they insisted he go. So he grabbed a few dollars from the olive-oil can on the counter, gathered up a book, his phone, headphones and a light jacket into a backpack, and set out on the fifteen-minute walk to the boardwalk, where the juice bar was.  
The juice bar was surprisingly expansive. It fronted an entire hundred-feet stretch of the boardwalk, and was backed by a large park covered with grass and a few scattered trees. The amount of noise that was audible made him wary, and he decided to put his headphones on before going in- and when he went in, he was grateful for it. There was guitar music blasting from the speakers positioned near the ceiling, a juice bar surrounded in greenery that made it look like a tropical island, an area covered in mats with a few pieces of gymnastics equipment pushed against the walls, and a corner with a bookshelf, a sizeable amount of beanbags, and a TV. Billy made a beeline straight to the bookshelf and collapsed on a beanbag. What else was he supposed to do there? Sports?  
He tried to read for some time, but his gaze wandered and ended up landing on the three figures in the mats area. One was dancing in a breakdancing-hip hop kind of style, matching beat to the music, and the other two seemed to be practicing handsprings. Then Billy groaned when he realized that the two practicing handsprings were wearing very familiar colors. Red and pink to be exact. If that wasn’t enough to tell him who they were, the fact that the boy was a redhead would have given it away. It was Jason and Kim. Though of course he was expecting that. They were the ones who had invited him, after all- but did he really want to see them?  
Jason laughed as he leapt into an aerial, Kim matching him step for step. Gymnastics was fun, no matter whether everyone laughed at him because “gymnastics is for girls!” And, just to add insult to the injuries he’d given to the jerks who’d said that the week before, he’d agreed with Kim that on Sunday they’d swap ranger colors, so that morning he’d snuck into Beryl’s room and stolen one of her pink shirts. How he hadn’t been discovered, he had no idea. It was a simple pink t-shirt with a print of purple roses around the neckline and hems, but there, she had a lot of shirts.  
Jason didn’t usually wear pink, but it was a nice color and Dahlia had given him a lecture once about it having been a male color once. The biggest problem with the pink shirt became apparent when Beryl stormed in an hour after he arrived and started yelling his ears off for having taken her shirt. She screamed at him in Hebrew for ten minutes straight before pulling off her flip flop and smacking him with it. Jason smiled in Billy’s direction when he finally noticed him- the blue ranger had known what he was doing when he’d put the headphones on. Hearing Beryl’s screams would definitely have given him a bad headache.  
Kim burst out laughing, and Trini and Zack raced over to see what was going on, Trini’s guitar still hanging on its strap around her neck and bouncing against her side. They knew that they could always count on the Scotts to supply some funny drama every week.   
“Hey! Shut up, will you? You’re making people leave!” Ernie yelled from behind the bar. When Beryl didn’t stop, he came out and grabbed the collar of her shirt. “I said, _shut up!!!”_  
The incongruity of the situation, the short, pudgy guy with a graying goatee trying to threaten the athletic redhead who was obviously at least half a head taller than him, made Billy lose concentration and snap his book shut. At some point Dahlia had arrived and sat down on another beanbag, since there she was, reading A Short History of Nearly Everything.  
“Good grief, can’t you guys shut up? I can hear you even through my headphones!” the blue ranger snarled, then turned to Beryl. “And you called your brother some pretty nasty names there. I’ve seen him fight, and talking to him like that is a big no-no.”  
“Billy?” Jason looked at his- well, he considered him a friend- weirdly. “Why are you defending me?”  
“I have no idea! All I know is that I understood most of what she was saying, and it was just mean!” Billy threw his hands up. “I don’t get it! Oh, can I try the butterbeer shake?”  
“Fine…” Ernie headed back to the bar and started pouring butterscotch syrup into a blender. “Four dollars.”  
Billy handed over the money that he’d brought and watched as the middle-aged bartender added several scoops of vanilla ice cream, ice cubes, milk and spices- cinnamon for sure, possibly nutmeg?- to the pitcher, then ran it until the whole thing was smooth.  
Trini walked over as Ernie was pouring the shake into a cup, having divested herself of her guitar. “You’re also a Potterhead?” she asked, resting her elbows on the bar.  
“Um… No…” Billy stuttered, making it painfully clear that what he really meant was yes.  
“So, you randomly ordered the butterbeer shake without knowing what it is, hey?” Trini raised an eyebrow and wove her fingers together.   
“It sounded interesting….” he mumbled, not meeting her eyes.   
“I’m sure that’s why.” Trini rolled her eyes and returned to the stool where she’d left her guitar. Billy was so unsociable sometimes- really, all the time- and she couldn’t really understand why, but she figured that she had a good enough grasp on his character that she could compose his melody.  
She started strumming an A# major chord, picking it as her bouncing-off point, but then her fingers started picking out a different tune, and she didn’t understand why until she looked up at the door and saw Bulk and Skull coming in. Somehow her hands knew before her eyes if someone new was in the area.  
Ernie greeted them with a cheery wave. “What can I get for you today, boys? The usual?”  
“Yeah, that’s perfect. Morning Trini, hi Kim, and oh! Hey Zack!” Bulk called, waving.  
Zack waved back to the two, despite being in the middle of a handstand, and ended up falling on his head. “Oof! Lesson learned, don’t wave to people in the middle of a handstand…” His face was flushed even more than it usually was, meaning that he was practically red all over.  
Kim busted out laughing again, which made Zack blush even more- if that were even possible. He was already a bright enough shade of scarlet. Then she ran over to help him up, interrupting her series of roundoff-handsprings. “You okay there?”  
“I think…” Zack was about to add more, but then Skull ran over and tugged at his shirt. “Uh, what?”  
“We’re having a joke contest! Loser has to eat an entire box of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans!” Bulk yelled over, accidentally bumping into Billy as he sat down.  
“Hey!”  
“Oh yeah, let’s do it!” Zack vaulted over a table in his haste to get over to the table where Bulk had set a box of the jelly beans. Trini winced from afar at seeing the purple box, having returned to trying to compose Billy’s tune- she had bad memories from when Zack had dared her to eat some of those jelly beans.  
Skull started. “Why do we tell actors to break a leg?” The others narrowed their eyes. “Because every play has a cast!”  
Bulk snorted, then glanced at Zack. “You want to go?”  
“Nah, I’m thinking.”  
“Okay. Why did the kid throw his clock out of the window?”  
Before Bulk could reveal the answer, the beeping of Zack’s phone interrupted the whole thing. It was a message from Alpha and Zordon, of course- the beeping tone was unique to that chat. He’d made sure of that so that he would be able to tell if there was something going on just by hearing the ringtone. “Sorry, gotta go. My mom wants to see me. How about we continue this later?”  
“Sure.”  
Zack glanced at the phone and grinned.  
**The Big Z, 11:03**  
**How do I use this thing? Just type and hit the arrow?**  
The rangers exchanged glances as the others joined him, except for Billy. There was definitely something up.  
**J-man, 11:04**  
**Yeah, you got it, Alpha.**  
**The Big Z, 11:06**  
**Rangers, there is a group of putties attacking civilians in Angel Grove Park. Go there right away.**  
“We have to go!” Kim whispered. “Come on!”  
Trini quickly noticed that Billy wasn’t with them. She ran over to him and muttered “Billy, there’s an attack, we need to go!”  
“No,” he said, attempting to ignore her.   
“Come on, show those putties what kind of power the triceratops holds…” Billy sat bolt upright, still ignoring her and nearly spilling his shake. Trini rolled her eyes and returned to the rest. “I don’t know what’s up with him, but let’s just go. He’ll join us when he’s ready.”

The entire juice bar faded out the moment Trini spoke. Billy saw an enormous army of putties, classic gray and black. Then he looked around and saw the other ranger- the ranger from the nightmare in the hospital. But it wasn’t a nightmare, was it? He was nowhere near asleep. The ranger- Drakkon- held up a different power coin, then placed it on his dagger and pointed it at the putties. “Rise, my Triceratops Sentries! Plague the rangers in their darkest hour!” he called. A blue and green beam of light emitted from the dagger and coin and hit the putties, armoring them in blue until they looked like twisted versions of Billy’s own ranger form- twisted blue rangers, like the ones who had attacked the woman in his nightmare. It was his coin! Drakkon was using his coin to threaten the other rangers!

Billy jumped, accidentally flipping the shake cup and spilling it all over Bulk, who was sitting nearby. Skull couldn’t help himself and cracked up.  
“Dude, seriously!” Bulk scolded, though it didn't seem to bother him that much.  
“I’m sorry!” Billy flipped out and ran outside. He had to get some fresh air. He couldn’t breathe. Billy honestly wasn’t sure what he’d just seen; in contrast to the other two, he hadn’t been sleeping. It was an out-of-nowhere daymare. He’d assumed it was because of the venom from the sting on the bus drive home, but these seemed to have some overarching logic to them. The one he got in the hospital was first in the timeline, this one was second and what he saw during the night came third. Tommy- no, Drakkon, he corrected himself- probably got the blue coin during the events of the first hallucination, then created the blue putties- which would be what he just saw- and then he sent them to attack the woman who had the same name as his cousin. Now, his cousin was twelve and still in Pakistan, and she was definitely not black- she had the same dark olive tone to her skin as he did, as far as he knew. So it wasn’t her, but it was a really weird coincidence that the black woman had that exact name. Plus, who the hell was “Tommy”? Who was he to the rangers? He didn’t understand!

The rangers morphed and dashed to the park, enjoying themselves supremely. Trini got there first because of her superspeed, Kim got there just a few seconds after thanks to her flight, and the boys arrived last, to Zack’s chagrin.  
“I still don’t understand why you all have abilities and I got nothing!” Zack called indignantly, spinning around and making the putties around him fall to a beat that only he could hear.  
_“Zack, you also received an ability. The power of the black coin is temperature resistance- didn’t you notice it?”_ Zordon queried through the comm, leading to laughter.  
“That’s just lame,” Zack muttered, making the girls laugh even more as they zipped around in pink and yellow blurs- one in the sky and one on the ground- and Jason slingshotted two putties into the others, knocking them all over. “My ability sucks! It sucks hard!”   
“Zack, stop whining and come fight! Jason could use a hand,” Kim shouted, and indeed, Jason was being overwhelmed by a flood of the mud monsters.   
“Alright, fine. Power Axe!” Zack swung his axe around and charged into the fray, screaming his head off. The rangers ended up decimating the putties within minutes, and the ground was full of slimy putty. The kids would be happy; their parents, not so much.   
“That was easy. Too easy. I wonder if Rita is planning something.”   
“Jason! Don’t jinx it. Let’s go back to Ernie’s- there’s a bunch of triple-chocolate shakes waiting for us. I’m paying. And besides, I want to work on the balance beam, and I know very well that your weakness is the pommel horse. You should work on that,” Kim scolded him, leading to another round of snickers.

Billy decided to go back home after the milkshake fiasco. He was tired of dealing with the people at the juice bar, not to mention having a double hallucination. The past two weeks had been a total disaster zone, he had no idea how to deal with all the crap that was going on, and by now he felt really close to having a full-on meltdown. He was in the garage- about to drop his bag off and get to work on the old VW Fox- when he noticed that his headphones were missing. Back at Ernie’s, no doubt.  
Billy ran back to Ernie’s in half the time it had taken him to return home- it _was_ kind of awesome how the triceratops coin had increased his stamina so much in such a short period of time- and started rummaging frantically through the reading corner. They weren’t there. Nor were they anywhere near the mats or the tables. He was just about ready to panic about losing them when…   
“Looking for this?” Skull asked from behind him, spinning the headphones around on his arm.  
“Give them back!” Billy yelled, whirling around angrily and grabbing Skull’s shoulder.  
“What about please? Where is the polite Billy we all know and love? You can’t talk to my buddy here like this.” Bulk knocked Billy’s hand off Skull’s shoulder, and the redhead turned to him with a mischievous grin.  
“Give them back, please,” Billy requested, exasperated to high heaven.  
“Alright, I’ll give them back. But, since the joke competition was canceled, I’ll only do it if you eat a jelly bean from the Bertie Bott’s box,” Skull retorted, making Billy’s eyes widen in surprise.   
“No! Just give them back! I’m not going to eat one of those.” Billy grabbed for the headphones, intent on using his staggering height to his advantage, but Skull was swift and agile and quickly backed out of reach. Billy had, in fact, read Harry Potter, contrary to what he’d told Trini, and he knew to fear the insane flavors of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans. He also had a feeling that Bulk and Skull didn’t know anything about it and just saw it as a disgusting candy challenge.  
“Come on, just one jelly bean,” Bulk said as he tapped Billy on the shoulder, shaking the box in the process.  
“I’ll pick the jelly bean!” Skull decided and started to rummage through the box, popping one into his mouth and smiling. “Ooh, watermelon!”   
Billy wasn’t letting them feed him a jelly bean. He attempted to twist out of Bulk’s grip, but Skull pressed a bean against his mouth, and… 

It was exactly then that the rangers walked in. Unmorphed, of course. The moment they saw what Bulk and Skull were doing- i.e. trying to shove a jelly bean into Billy’s mouth- they all got at least somewhat annoyed.  
“Should we help him?” Kim asked, narrowing her eyes at the duo despite it kind of amusing her.  
“Of course,” Jason said unhesitatingly, jabbing an elbow into Kim’s shoulder, whereupon she rubbed it and glared at him ruefully.   
“But he ditched the battle. He deserves to suffer a little bit,” Zack countered, but Jason was on a roll.  
“Leave him alone. He already made it clear that he doesn’t want to, am I right, Billy?”  
Billy scowled.  
“Chill out, Jason, we just told him that if he wants his headphones back he needs to eat a nasty jelly bean. It’s just a joke,” Bulk explained, but Jason wasn’t ready to deal with any of his crap. He knocked Skull away, grabbed Billy’s headphones and handed them to their owner, then dragged Billy towards the rest of the rangers.  
“You’re welcome.”  
“Thanks.” Billy mouthed the word silently, unwilling to admit that he had needed help.  
“Anyway, dude, you need to stop ditching battles,” Zack scolded. “We’re going to need you at some point.” Then he rolled his eyes. “Man, who’d’ve thought that I’d ever say that?”  
“You’re here. That means that you handled that extremely quickly. You did not need my help at all.”   
“You still could’ve helped us,” Trini interjected, poking Zack’s arm and spinning around to duck under his arm.   
“This is useless. We shouldn’t be arguing- we need to learn how to defend ourselves. Here, I’ll teach you some moves.” Jason grabbed his backpack, pulled his bō-staff out and started spinning it, ending with the tip of the staff under Zack’s chin.  
“Impressive… I like your idea. Let’s do this!” Zack shoved the aluminum pole away and launched himself into a backflip, which encouraged Kim to go into a handstand.  
“Let’s gooo!” Kim called, turning right-side up and punching the air. “I got the triple-chocolate shakes!” Then she ran over to the bar and spoke to Ernie, who started pulling things out from beneath the bar and readying blenders.  
“I’m not doing this,” Billy said, attempting to ignore the others and walking to the reading corner. Jason chased after him and grabbed his arm again.  
“You are not bailing out on us again. You did it once already today, you’re not doing this twice,” Jason declared, making a few people in the vicinity look at them in confusion.  
“I most definitely can.” Billy folded his arms and shook himself loose from Jason’s grip.   
“Come on Billy, think of it as just a way to learn how to defend yourself. There are aliens attacking,” Trini attempted to convince him, joining them and snapping her fingers under his nose.  
“Yeah, you need it- more than the rest of us, in fact. After all, you _are_ the one Scorpina attacked,” Kim reminded him, cartwheeling over. “The shakes will be ready when we finish training.”  
“I was asleep when that happened!” Billy protested, instinctively reaching for the scar on his neck. The contact jolted him, and he saw for a moment an older teenager with dark hair that reached their shoulders, kneeling in front of a woman dressed in brown. He came to quickly, and Jason didn’t notice what had happened.  
“-exactly why you need to be more prepared. You need to be on guard at all times. Now come,” the red ranger commanded.  
Billy opened his mouth to object, but then he realized that there was no use. Jason and Trini were right. He needed to learn how to defend himself, ranger or no. It would be a useful skill to have, especially with the knowledge that hostile aliens exist.  
“Um, Jason? Remember that my bow is a long range weapon? Learning how to use a sword isn’t going to help me. I need to learn hand-to-hand combat, specifically,” Kim reminded him, reaching up to tap his head and accidentally knocking his baseball cap off.  
“That’s right. I only know fencing…” Jason trailed off, retrieving the hat and shoving it back on. The barber had cut his hair just a little too short when he’d gone to get a haircut on Friday.   
“So I’ll train her!” Zack jumped at the opportunity to be around Kim. “I can show her some hip hop kido, and she can switch it around with her gymnastics so it’s more her style. Hey, we should use dance moves in combat- Stingerella won’t know where the hell it came from.”  
“You mean Scorpina,” Trini corrected, wincing, despite the fact that it was her and Kim who’d invented the nickname thing, but they really needed to start taking everything seriously.   
“You coming?” Jason called from the padded area where he and Kim had done their backflips earlier, struggling to keep his grip on four fencing swords at once. One slid out of his hand, and he muttered something as he knelt to pick it up- and then all the rest clattered all over the floor. “Crap.”  
“Wait, wouldn’t hand to hand combat benefit all of us?” Kim landed her back tuck and did a roundoff-somersault onto the mats.  
“Except none of you actually know how to fight hand-to-hand,” Billy snapped, then walked over to Jason. “At least _he_ doesn’t act like a jerk.”  
“Hey, hip hop kido is no joke. It’s the closest thing we have to karate or something, so get your head out of your ass and go practice,” Zack retorted exasperatedly, pulled his phone out, and started playing a loud song with a funky beat. Kim started twirling, to his amusement, and he grabbed her arm and dragged her over to the other corner of the mats.  
“Yeah, but it’s not actually hand to hand combat. There’s no actual use to it.” Billy’s tactless comment made the black and pink rangers glare daggers at him.  
“It’s not like you know that from training in it!” The pitch of Kim’s voice rose sharply, and she glowered at the blue ranger.  
“Yeah, but it’s not like I pretend that I know when I don’t,” Billy retorted with a scowl.  
Jason's eyes met Kim's, sending a silent plea for her to stop. “Whoa there, let's just go train. Here.” He fumbled with the fencing swords, handing one to Billy and tossing two more to Trini, then spun his own around his wrist and caught it by the handle.  
Billy looked down at his sword, then looked at Jason, and to his surprise, the one Jason kept for himself was a different style- a larger guard, for one thing, with a longer and differently shaped blade. “Hey, why do you have a different sword?”  
Jason looked down at his sword in confusion, then smiled when he realized what Billy had meant. “Oh, this is an epée. It’s used in the style of fencing I learn. The ones I gave you two are foils, which are lighter, slightly shorter, and have different rules. Anyway, I have a feeling you might want to see a demo first, so here goes nothing…”  
Trini and Billy watched in awe as Jason darted forward, epée flashing in his right hand, left hand behind his back. His speed only increased as he duelled his invisible opponent- left, right, deflect, riposte, over, round the back, counterattack, parry- and then he stopped abruptly, breathing heavily. “Normally I’m not that fast. Must be the you-know-what boosting me.”

“You got this, Billy. Stay on your guard. Move around, use your height to your advantage. Trini, go fast. Don't let your opponent get so close to you- you're in control.” Jason called out tips while the other two battled.  
Billy felt like his feet were made of lead as he deflected Trini's rain of blows. The yellow ranger was using her innate speed and superior agility to kick his butt, and he wasn’t all that happy about it. His eyes started blurring, and only then did he notice the adrenaline that had started rushing through his bloodstream- but he could feel the vibrations produced by Trini’s small foils and could tell how exactly to deflect them. He started going on the offensive, actually using the butt of the handle at one point- a move that Trini barely managed to block.  
Jason was impressed. “Nice work, you guys! I never would have thought that you could do so well so fast!” He stepped between them and grabbed their wrists, then turned them inward so that their foils were facing him. “Let’s see how you do against me.” Before they could react, he’d already doven between them and caught up his epée, with which he rained down blows mercilessly.

“Whew! I’m beat!” Trini flopped onto the mats, wiping her forehead and flinging her arms out. “Hey, Kim, where are those shakes at?”   
“Yo, Ernie! What’s going on with the shakes?” Kim called as she flipped right side up and flung Zack to the ground. “I think it’s time that we refresh ourselves, eh?” Then she looked at Zack, who was grinning himself silly, and nudged him with her sneaker. “Up you get, cabrón.”  
“Just a moment,” Ernie replied, switching on one of the blenders with a slight smile.  
Jason dropped his epée and ran over to Kim. “I really hope you ordered one for Billy too,” he told her playfully, but with an undertone of implied threat. He knew Kim very well, and he also knew that she was not a fan of Billy, so he suspected that she had only ordered four shakes.  
“Why on earth would I do that?” Kim raised an eyebrow, unprepared for Jason’s slap to the cheek. “Ow!”  
“Because he’s part of our group now, of course we need to include him! If you don’t agree, well, at chaya b’seret,” Jason countered with a mischievous grin.  
“What?”  
“You’re living in dreamland.”  
“He ditched the battle!”  
“And he just cooperated with us for the training! Oh, heck with it. I’m not going to argue with you. Just order another shake.”  
“Fine! Ernie, make that five!” Kim requested, storming towards the bar with a huff.  
“Come on guys, the shakes are almost ready!” Jason waited a couple of minutes before calling for the rest of the rangers so they could recuperate. Zack was still recovering from getting slammed on the mats, and Trini and Billy were just about done for, as was obvious from the fact that both of them were limp on the floor and their faces were as red as Zack’s.  
Billy was the first up, with Trini close behind him, and when he saw the fifth shake that Ernie had just set out, he glanced at Jason, who was smirking like a satisfied cat that had just stolen the cream. “Uh… Thanks. I didn’t think you’d get one for me,” he told Kim, slightly shyly. He most definitely wasn’t used to having friends- wait, were they his friends? No, no, they were probably pretending. Either way, it was really nice of them. Probably Jason’s doing, judging from that Cheshire grin.  
“Well duh, of course she got you a shake. You’re part of the team.” Trini jumped in before Kim or Zack could insert a snarky comment that might insult Billy, knowing that they both tended towards the snide. She yawned and reached for a milkshake, the sugar hitting her with a flash of energy that managed to shake her awake.

Billy left the juice bar after he’d finished his milkshake. He’d dealt with enough for the day, and he needed a chance to calm down. He’d likely end up working on his design for the flying car- Alpha had thrown a few tips his way about cold deuterium fusion, and he figured that it might help. This time he didn’t forget the headphones- in fact, he was listening to a podcast about fission-fusion weirdness when his dad waved to him from the garage. The hood of the Fox was open and he was tinkering with the engine. “Hey son, how’s it going? How was your morning?”  
“Fine.” Billy cut his father short and headed for the kitchen. It was past twelve, he was hungry despite the chocolate shake he’d had twenty minutes ago, and his parents were a _little_ bit overenthusiastic about the other rangers claiming to be his friends. They were more than acquaintances, for sure, but not quite friends yet, he figured as he dug through the fridge in search of the blueberries.  
His dad showed up just behind him and stole a blueberry from the container, then laughed when Billy snatched it back and popped it in his mouth. “You want to help with the car? I’ve got a little mess going on with the wires,” he asked, hoping that he could perhaps work some information out of his son about the events of the morning while they cleaned the engine.  
“First I want to eat some dam blueberries, okay?” Billy reached for a yogurt cup and ducked away, a silly little smile creeping across his lips as he realized the pun. “I’m hungry.”  
“Okay then, Billy-boy. I’ll let you eat your yogurt.” Billy’s dad had turned away, heading towards the garage, when he heard a yell from upstairs.  
“Hey, Matthew, remember that it’s Ramadan. You’re almost halfway through- you’ll be fine.”  
“Okay, Laila, love.”

“Score!” Billy’s dad landed a crumpled piece of paper in the trash can, laughing with glee. Billy shrugged, tossed his empty yogurt cup over his shoulder in what seemed like a haphazard way, and made for the garage door, with his dad gaping at his son’s perfect throw behind him. “How the hell did you do that?”  
“Stuff.” Billy’s little smile was unmistakable.  
“Since when is Billy so sassy?” David was leaning on the door leading from the garden, his mouth curved into a cocky little smirk.  
Ariel was standing next to him, puzzled, with her arms crossed. “Since when are Aspies sarcastic?”  
Billy flushed and raced for the old VW Fox, flinging himself to the ground and attempting to slide himself under the card, but his head encountered something with a loud thud and he winced in pain. “Ow!”  
“Oy, Billy, you okay?” David winced in sympathy as he ran over to help his brother up, only to bang his head into the side of the car. “Owwww, that hurts! No, David, it’s Ramadan, don’t curse. Don’t curse.”  
“David, are you alright? What happened? Did Billy run off because of me?” Ariel, startled and worried, made for the door, but Matthew shut the door before she could go through and turned to look her in the eyes. “Now, explain who you are and how you know my son.”  
“We’re fine!” David called as he helped Billy up. “Dad, she goes to college with me. She's learning psychology, and we're doing a project together to see where our areas overlap. She's also the oldest sister of one of Billy's friends. You can trust her."  
"Fine."  
Billy, still rubbing his head in pain, turned on his brother. “What the hell, David? What on earth were you thinking? You don’t just tell people about your little brother’s stuff!” Without waiting for a response, he stormed off to the front of the car, grabbed a pair of pliers from the toolbox on the floor, and started digging through the engine. "Come on, Dad, you were the one who wanted to do this. I'm certainly not doing it alone!" Though considering what he was planning for the old car, he'd definitely end up doing it all himself.

The rangers were sitting around a table at the juice bar, laughing about the last attack. “I can’t believe we fought a _pig_ today! I mean, shit, he was carrying a fork and a knife like they were weapons! Wow, Rita needs to really up her game if she ever expects to defeat us,” Zack commented while still snickering, then shrunk away from Trini's glare.  
“First of all, don't curse. Second of all, yeah, that was lame! I mean, it threw up everything because we sprinkled chili powder on it. That’s just dumb!” Trini complained, downing a gulp of her banana-orange shake and making a face. “I’ve still got chili in my lungs.”  
“Billy, is there any way to sterilize our weapons? The idea of using them right now, after they got puked up by that monster, is kind of nauseating, and I really don’t want to vomit right now...” Kimberly asked and pretended she was throwing up.   
“Gross!” Billy laughed and swatted her shoulder. “Sure, I can do that. Just show up at the Command Center at four, okay?”  
“Great, thanks!” Kimberly replied as she ran over to the balance beam, climbed up, and attempted to do a backflip off the beam- an attempt that failed miserably. “Ouch!”  
All of the other four rangers started laughing their asses off, but Billy was the only one who wasn't fully distracted by laughing, and he ran over to help her up. "You alright there?"  
“Yeah, I'm good.”  
Billy heard Trini slap the table, and the others jumped. “Guys, you know that the fate of the world is lying in our hands, right?”  
Everyone started cracking up again, and Billy smiled. This was fun.

“Billy, my boy, up-up-up and out of bed! You've got school today!” Matthew called, shaking Billy and snapping him from his dream.  
Billy opened his eyes with a wide smile on his face. If there was one thing that the dream had told him, it was that today was going to be a great day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eek! 100 reads! You guys are awesome!!!  
> Hope you guys liked our Ernie blend for this chapter! It took some time to work out all the kinks, but it's worth it.  
> With so much love and fist-bumps,  
> SpringStar2004 and greenmoon830


	9. Mega Victory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're back!  
> Yup, chapter 7 is here, baby! Insight into the rangers' civilian lives, specifically Trini's, and maybe even a megazord???  
> Enjoy!

“Woohoo!!!” Kim, carefully poised on the higher of the uneven bars, let herself swing down in a wide arc, released her grip on the bar, and did a double twist-flip to the mattress.

“Nice job, K!” Jason ran over to her and gave her a hi-five. “You just need to perfect that mount now, and you’re clear. Though you might want to work on that pirouette near the end- why you chose the Stalder is beyond me.”

“It was my coach’s choice. She thought that I could do it. Apparently it’s just a tad too hard- but I’ll get it. I swear.” Kim grabbed Jason’s hand and swung herself over his arm, sending him rolling to the ground.

“Wow. Did  _ not _ see that coming,” Jason muttered as he pushed himself up from the ground. “Maybe try that move on a putty next time they attack?”

Kim laughed. She hadn’t planned on judo-flipping Jason, but she ended up doing it, it worked, and he was right, it was a pretty cool move. Pulling her phone out of her gym bag, she dashed off a text to Trini, but Trini didn’t respond. “Huh, odd.”

“Hijos, dinner is ready!” Katrina called, giving the gazpacho a final buzz with the stick blender and then moving over to the oven to pull out the garlic bread. It was the fresh baguette's scent, with its overtones of garlic and the deep notes of Spanish extra-virgin olive oil, that finally got the kids' attention and distracted them from their episode of Ryusoulger. Sebastian wheeled himself to the kitchen, and Trini jogged over a second later, having paused to stop the video and close Seb's laptop.

She looked at Seb, smiling up at their mother from the low vantage point of his wheelchair, and wished that at some point they'd be able to compete against one another- though considering that he couldn't walk two steps without falling due to his dyspraxia, that probably could never happen. Trini seated herself in her chair and held out her hands to Seb and her mother, and they all bowed their heads while Katrina recited the traditional grace. Then they started chowing down on the delicious garlic bread and fresh-tasting soup.

“So what's new with you guys?” Katrina asked, wiping her mouth with a napkin and tearing off a bite of baguette.

“Next week is the last day of school! I can’t wait for the summer- we're gonna have so much fun!” Trini grinned and spooned some gazpacho into her mouth. Summer was bound to be crazy-insane.

“I wholeheartedly hope you’re not planning to waste all of your time in the juice bar or at home, watching those Japanese shows you and your brother love watching,” Katrina said, raising an eyebrow at the laptop in the living room.

“Of course not, mamá. Kim and I are planning to go looking for some more aliens to fight,” Trini answered jokingly, making Seb attempt to stifle a burst of hysterical laughter and Katrina stare at her, horrified.

“Trinidad! Hija, why on earth would you do that? It’s dangerous!”

“Kidding, kidding. I’ve had enough dealings with aliens to last me the rest of my life,” Trini reassured her with a smile. She knew that she’d probably be dealing with aliens again sooner or later.

“You still need to do other stuff over the summer. How about I sign you up for more guitar lessons?” Katrina suggested, the look in her eyes indicating that it wouldn’t be a good idea to refuse. “So, Sebastian, how about your day?”

“I went over to Remi’s house. We played video games, did a bit of coding- she managed to retrieve her dad’s old Commodore from the attic- and it turns out that she may be bi,” Seb replied, not realizing that he’d just dropped a huge bombshell.

“Wait, Remi? As in Remi Hoshikawa?” Trini whipped around to stare at her brother, splattering the table with gazpacho in the process. “She’s bi?”

“What do you mean, ‘bi’?” Katrina narrowed her eyes. She had a feeling she wouldn’t like the answer.

“Um, bisexual…” Seb answered.

“What? What does that mean?”

“She’s attracted to both boys and girls. Mamá, don’t freak out.”

“That is forbidden! How dare you associate with someone who disobeys the Bible? Don’t ever meet with her again!” Katrina freaked, Seb winced, and Trini flushed deeply, her cheeks turning the same color as Jason's suit.

“I shouldn't have told her about this…" Seb muttered. "Mamá, please calm down. You know that some people say that David and Jonathan were gay, right?" But the damage was done; for the rest of dinner the only sound was of them eating and Katrina's lengthy rant about the LGBTQ+ community.

“May I please be excused, Mamá?” Trini asked. Her appetite had disappeared after the rant, and her cheeks were still burning with red.

“Of course, mi hija. Are you alright? You don’t look too well.”

“I’m fine, I’m just tired.” Trini yawned, as though to prove her point, and made a beeline for her room. Breathing heavily, she pulled the little sabertooth keychain out of her pocket and played with it nervously, eyes flickering from the door to the window and back. 

Seb knocked on her door with a rhythmic rat-tat-tat. “Hey, hermanita, what's going on? You okay back there?”

“I’m fine,” Trini muttered and squeezed the keychain in her palm.

“You’re acting weird.”

“I just need to breathe. I’m going out. Please don’t tell Mamá, I need some time alone…” Trini responded, opened her window and jumped out into the bushes in the backyard. She ran to the gate, clambered over it, and wandered through the streets while the sky turned red and then darkened to a deep indigo. Other people who were out in the streets looked at her strangely- she was wearing a t-shirt she’d cut the neckline and hems from and sweatpants, which she normally wore to bed- and not helping matters was when she kicked over a trash can that was standing on the curb.

She’d always known that she wasn’t attracted to boys- ever since she’d kissed Zack in a game of truth or dare in fourth grade, actually- and she’d known that her mother wouldn’t be very happy if she found out. She’d never really thought, though, about the fact that her mother’s Catholic beliefs would turn her mother against her. Her mother was a serious businesswoman, a lawyer who always seeks justice, but she also helped others- she was currently helping Kim’s parents apply for citizenship. She’d never realized how far her mother’s religiousness went, though, and now understood that from Katrina’s point of view, if something is considered a sin, it's forbidden. If her mother found out about her sexual orientation, she would drag her to church and pray to God to fix her.

Trini kicked the trash can again and cried out angrily. She needed to punch something, and she’d actually gone for a walk in the hopes of finding some putties to beat up. She should have known to be careful with what she wished for, because the next thing she knew, twenty putties were surrounding her. Trini grinned, looked around to make sure nobody was around, and pulled out her morpher. 

“It's morphin time! Smilodon!”

The yellow light engulfed her, clothing her in tight-fitting spandex- she smirked as she recalled Alpha's objections to the term- pulled her daggers out of nowhere- where  _ did _ they come from?- and started to slash at the putties, putting her training with Jason to good use. She didn’t think about the other rangers, but a minute later, Billy charged out of a portal, morpher in hand, looking just as surprised to be there as she was to see him.

"It's time for molecular transmutation! Wait, that's not right. It's morphin time! Triceratops!" The blue lance appeared in Billy’s hands and he speared a putty, tossing it through the air to land on the trash can Trini had been attacking. He could feel Trini looking at him, and he snapped at her, “Zordon sent an alert on the group. Apparently his drones spotted you fighting.”

“Doesn’t explain why you were the first one to respond!” Trini taunted back, sinking one dagger deep into a putty’s torso and using the other to slice off another’s head.

“I don’t know, okay?” Billy snapped his fingers, and a blue force field shimmered to life just as a putty attempted to head-bash him. He’d obviously been practicing, Trini realized as the putty stumbled back, straight onto her dagger, though she didn’t understand how. It wasn’t as though force fields could be used offensively, right?  _ Right? _

Once the putties had all melted into goo, Billy glanced around, framed his morpher with his hands and opened a portal. “I’m outta here. Power down.” The blue light blinded her, and when she could see again, the portal was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Billy.

Trini was bored and weirded out and still upset. Maybe Zordon and Alpha would have something for her to pummel. She powered down, opened a portal with a deft motion, and walked through. Next thing she could see was the ring of computer monitors that surrounded the holographic table. “Hey Zordon, hi Alpha.”

“Trini, you came just in time. We have a surprise for you and the other rangers.” Zordon smiled as Trini came into view, the neckline of her t-shirt having slid down to reveal her shoulder. He didn’t like to admit it, but his thoughts could sometimes be slightly  _ inappropriate… _ and Trini was somehow effortlessly stunning.

“I seriously hope it’s something I can kick, because I really need it.” Trini scowled at the air and punched one of the monitors, cracking it. She quickly backed away. “Oops…”

“Ai-yi-yi-yi! You broke the screen!” Alpha scolded, LEDs flashing on his head. “But you're in luck. It’s a fighting simulation.”

“Awesome! Turn it on, and let's go!” She grinned wildly and tried to do a backflip, as she’d seen Kim do so many times, but failed and fell flat on her face. “I thought that was gonna work!”

“Whoa there. Don’t you think you should wait for the others?” Zordon asked her.

“No, text them- but I start first! It’s morphin time! Smilodon!” She made for the door that had just popped out of nowhere and found herself in a football arena. Surrounding her there were a few dozen putties, making their weird burbley sounds and waving their arms up and down. Trini smiled inside the helmet, then leapt into action. Her speed overwhelmed the putties, never staying in one place longer than it’d take her to shoot her blaster or slash with her dagger.

“Okay, this is getting boring. Can you load up someone more challenging? Like Scorpina?” The putty goo faded out of existence, and the Antaredian appeared in front of her, every detail perfectly rendered- from her eyes, which looked like a nebula that shifted every second, down to the way she smirked as she drew her sword. Okay, she was getting distracted, but the fight was giving her a Stinger v.s. Scorpio vibe. It was an amazing feeling.

Jason, Kim and Zack entered the arena a minute later, chatting about something. They all flipped out when Scorpina charged them, but Trini got in front of her and drove her back.

“What's she doing here?! I get it now- girl, you should've texted us much sooner. It’s morphin time! Pteranodon!” Kim called, summoned her bow, and started rapid-fire shooting arrows at Scorpina. 

"Mastodon!" Zack started dancing to a beat only he could hear before trying to jump-kick the alien, but she dodged.

“Calm down, rangers. It's just a simulation. I wanted you to train before your next fight. Uh, where’s Billy?” Zordon’s voice echoed through the arena, making the black and pink rangers sigh with relief and then continue attempting to kick Scorpina’s butt.

“Aren’t you joining?” Trini wandered over to Jason, who hadn’t morphed yet and was staring into the sky, which looked like outer space. She could spot a nebula here, a galaxy there, stars everywhere, and it was beautiful.

“Not until Billy shows. I kind of doubt that he’ll come on his own, so is there any chance that you could transport him here?” Jason asked, his eyes fixated on the starry sky. “This is amazing.”

“He came to help before.  _ And _ he was the only one who showed,” Trini corrected. “He is not ditching us again!” She exited the arena and paused by Alpha, who had loaded up a hologram of Billy. He was lying in his bed, absorbed in a book, and wearing Ravenclaw pajamas. Trini was smirking like nobody’s business as she opened a portal beneath Billy.

“Ouch! What the hell? Are you _ insane?” _ Billy scrambled to his feet, glaring at Trini. He'd not fallen through the portal, more collapsed through it; his blanket had come through as well, meaning that he tripped over it and came crashing down again.

“That’s for lying to me about not loving Harry Potter!” Trini snapped, then raced back through the door and nearly knocked Zack over in the process.

“Hey!” Zack objected, and then he saw Billy. “You got the text! I saw that you read it! And you didn't show up after that!” he yelled angrily, poking his head through the door to the arena while shooting his blaster defensively.

“I came earlier to help Trini! Oh, and I didn't see you guys there either!” He detangled himself from the blanket, stormed over to the door and flung it open. Then he froze. “What is she doing here?”

He dropped the book in shock. Three and half weeks had passed since they had become rangers, not that he was counting. Well, he was counting, but not because of the ranger thing. It was because of the scorpion woman, or as he called her, she who must not be named. And they were fighting against her like it was nothing! His mind was racing, and he couldn't figure out what was going on.

“Calm down, Billy. It’s just a training simulation. It’s a hologram.” Zordon's words didn't get through to Billy, and the Eltarian looked worried.

Jason, noticing that Billy was in the middle of a panic attack, slapped his shoulder to get his attention. “This is for hurting one of my friends!” He morphed in a bright flash of scarlet and whipped his sword out, diving for the Antaredian warrior. Billy smiled to himself, but he still didn’t move. He still wasn't willing to trust the rangers, but, admittedly, they weren’t that bad. In his last dream they were all at least tolerable, even Kim. And now Jason was being really nice to him, and he'd even defended him from Bulk and Skull.

“If you switch the simulation to something else, I’ll join them,” Billy muttered and reached into his pocket for his morpher, to Zordon's delight. Alpha spun some dials on the table, and Scorpina's form wavered, reforming into Goldar. A squad of putties joined him, and the arena itself reformed into some sort of park.

“Hey!” Zack called out in surprise. "What the heck just happened?"

“It's morphin time! Triceratops!” Billy ran in, forming an impenetrable shield around his fist right before it made contact with Goldar's shoulder. The hologram recoiled, and then- with no warning at all- an alarm sounded. They could hear Zordon curse in his native language, which was actually translated by the software now installed in their helmets and was no word that anyone should be using, as they ran back through the door into the Command Center.

"What's going on?" Kim asked the question on everyone's minds, and was answered by Alpha enlarging a hologram on the table. It was an image of a figure dressed in black knight-like armor, taken from about ten feet away.

“That's the Knasty Knight- one of Rita’s strongest fighters. He aided her when she destroyed Tramac 3- you need to be careful. He dominated my forces in battle. It won't be an easy fight.” Zordon sounded thoughtful, as though he were recalling memories.

“We’ll manage.” Zack grinned, returning the blaster to its holster and pulling his axe out. He swung it, making everyone duck, and Jason scowled at him as he opened the gate.

“Let’s go.” Jason was first through, sword raised, and quickly followed by Zack, Trini and Kim. Billy stared at the portal for a second, groaned, rolled his eyes and went after them.

As it turned out, the boys having summoned their weapons beforehand was lucky, since they were surrounded by putties the moment they emerged from the portal. They still couldn't understand their blubbering sounds, but they could definitely understand the monster, who had just commanded the putties to bring them down.

Trini's daggers flickered into existence and she barged into the putties' midst, slashing and stabbing at speeds that made her appear to be merely a blur of yellow. Left, right, up, feint, retreat and explode- she was using some of the tricks Jason had taught her on Sunday, and it was fun. She had asked him for more classes, and he’d willingly obliged.

Kim dropped down onto a putty from the air, startling both it and Zack, and, getting off it, flung another one to the ground with the move that she’d used on Jason. “Hey scaredy cat, mind getting out of the way?”

“You can f***ing fly!!! How am I supposed to get out of the way, huh?” Zack sliced through a putty angrily and knocked another one off its feet. After accidentally bumping into Billy, who muttered something exasperatedly and ran off, a turquoise orb of light gathering at the end of his blaster, he rebounded and slashed through a few more of the footsoldiers.

“Okay, you guys, let’s do this! Attack pattern alpha!” Jason yelled, stabbing his sword into the ground and creating a miniature earthquake that knocked over the putties nearest to him.

“What the hell is attack pattern alpha?!”

Jason’s mouth quirked into a grin as he replied, “Beats me. I thought it sounded cool. Just do your thing.”

Once the putties were gone, the rangers faced off against the Knasty Knight. Jason held his sword at the ready, poised to attack the moment the monster made a threatening move, but he never got a chance to attack, since the moment that the monster drew his sword, Zordon cursed loudly over the comms. He was so loud that Billy doubled over.

“I  _ hate  _ these helmets!” Billy called and put his hands over his ears, or at least where they’d be if he weren’t wearing a helmet. He kept doing it even though he already knew very well that it would be of no help, and he didn’t understand why.

“What’s going on, Zordon?”

“ _ That sword of his? It contains a very powerful- you know what, just make sure to bring it back to the command center at the end of the fight. _ ”

“Sure thing, Zordon. We’ll get the sword to you,” Trini replied, making a dash for the monster. He blocked her blow and threw her back at the rangers. “Oh, wow- he really is a strong one!”

“Hey! Don’t mess with my bestie!” Kim yelled, shooting an arrow and then running towards him and trying to strangle him with her bowstring. The knight stopped the arrow with his shield and shoved her away, with all the air forced out of her lungs by the strength of the blow.

“Why aren't we calling our zords? We could crush him easily!” Zack asked, tossing the tiny mastodon from one hand to the other. 

“Whoa there, calm down! We don’t want the knight to grow, and besides, if we can’t handle him now, how are we going to deal with him when he goes giant?" Jason punched Zack's shoulder, and the figurine fell to the ground. "Anyway, did you forget one of the three rules? We're not allowed to escalate a fight unless the enemy forces us, and it really doesn't look like he's forcing us!"

“Oh well… I had a feeling that there was something more to the zords than we could see. A mega formation, or something.” Trini turned around from her position behind the knight, realizing something. "Also, Jason, how on earth did you remember that?"

“ _ How do you know about the megazord? _ ” The surprise was evident in Zordon's voice.

“I… I just had a hunch,” Trini replied hesitantly, attempting to snipe at the knight with her blaster. How was she supposed to explain her stupid obsession with kaiju movies and tokusatsu series to a million-year-old interdimensional being?

Zordon sighed as the rangers rushed into battle. Teenagers were prone to rebellion, which meant that he'd have to keep an eye on them to make sure that there would be minimal damage. Fights between the zords and enlarged monsters could get messy.

Zack threw himself into the air, landing a kick on the knight's helmet that made him stumble back, but the force of the hit demorphed him and sent him flying. "Whoaaaaaaaa!"

"You okay there, Zack?" Kim ran over to him, but he nudged her aside.

"I'm fine, just misjudged how hard I kicked."

"That's why you have Newton's third law, you idiot!" Billy yelled, thrusting his lance through a crack in the Knasty Knight's armor and beckoning to Jason. "Could use your super strength right about now!"

"Incoming!" Jason landed on the weapon, which Billy was holding up in a horizontal position, and sent the knight flying. The adrenaline in his system was tangible despite the helmet hiding his face as he did a backflip away from the knight, shooting his blaster with full force. When he landed, he tossed the lance back to the blue ranger.

"Not what I meant you to do, but definitely a good exhibition of the third law of motion."

Jason laughed, exhilarated. Not only was he having fun, but Billy was finally participating in the fight, and he seemed to be enjoying it as well.

"It's morphin time! Mastodon!" Zack yelled, whipping his axe out and running straight at their enemy, who had regained his footing. Before anyone could yell at him, he slid straight past the knight, crashing the axe into his leg on his way through. "Booyah!"

Kim spun around and started shooting a barrage of arrows in the knight's direction, landing a few hits on his torso and making him wince. Then, launching into the air, she swooped up and around to shoot him from above before diving down to hover next to Trini. "Could I borrow one of your daggers?"

"Sure. Go ahead."

The dagger glinted in her hand as she soared back up and started performing disorienting maneuvers, throwing the knight off kilter and distracting him so that when she dropped down from above, he didn't see it coming. "Hell to the yes!"

Zack grabbed onto her shoulder and did a half-aerial kick, which hit the knight's upper torso, but Kim shoved him off before he could do the second part of the kick, which would hit his head. "What the f***, Kim?"

"I'm not as strong as you think I am, and you're a foot taller than me!"

"You're a tiny ball of rage! What was I supposed to think?"

"Go use Jason for that sort of thing, you big-" Kim reverted to cursing in Spanish, one of the few times Zack had ever heard her using her mother tongue when not talking to her parents or Trini. Kim could act ditzy at times, but her mind was sharper than a razor, and anytime that she started yelling at someone in a language that wasn't English, that was a warning to get the hell out of there. Zack decided to take the warning.

After a few more minutes of fighting, Jason managed to sneak under the Knasty Knight’s guard and disarmed him with a deft motion of his sword. “I got the sword, Zordon.”

_ “Great. Good job, Jason.” _

The knight, in return, unsheathed another sword, one that looked more simple and utilitarian compared to the glowing green crystal at the hilt of the one Jason had taken.

“This sword matches his armor, so why was he using that one?” Trini wondered out loud as Jason opened a portal, ducked through, and returned without the stolen sword. 

“Maybe because he doesn’t know anything about fashion?” Kim joked, dashing forward and using her bow to shove the sword down so she could punch the knight in the face.

“I’m glad you have interests outside of this battle- it will make it easier to end you.” Rita’s voice made everyone jump as the space sorceress appeared a few yards away. “Finster, what is fashion?” she hissed, as though trying to hide her ignorance of the word, which made the girls and Zack giggle. She must have received an answer, because she didn't mention it again. “You have improved. I’m quite impressed. Which is why I came to deliver this in person. Korgeto sok-hilma aiboaraenu!”

This time the rangers understood her when she switched into the older language- the spell meant "make my soldier grow"- and indeed, that's what happened. Rita laughed loudly, vanishing in a flash of blinding light as the rangers scrambled to summon their zords.

"Oh f***!” Zack cursed angrily as he waited for the tractor beam to activate.

“You're the one who wanted to use the zords," Trini reminded him as she slipped through the entry hatch of her zord. "Also, stop cursing, you foul-mouthed I-don't-know-what-you-are-or-what-to-call-you!"

"Ouch! Well, crap on a goddamn stick- this sucks hard!" Zack complained as he crashed into his zord's entry hatch again. "What is wrong with my zord?"

Trini's word combo name, in combination with Zack's creative cursing and malfunctioning zord, made Kim crack up so hard that she almost fell out of the air. "Will you two  _ please _ shut up?"

"NEVER!" they yelled in unison, making Kim laugh again.

“You two sound like an old married couple."”

Billy froze for a second as he scanned the labels on the zord’s controls. His vision blurred for a moment, and when it cleared, he could see the black and yellow rangers kissing as though their lives depended on it. He couldn’t see their faces, but the suits, along with a few scattered details, were enough. It couldn’t be anyone but Zack and Trini- and they were  _ kissing _ .

Jason then jogged over, in full suit and his helmet on. “Hey, lovebirds. We’ve got a battle going on- Kim and Billy are waiting for support. You can kiss more after we’ve kicked Tommy’s butt!”

“Fine…”

“Unless he kills us…” Trini muttered anxiously.

“Well, way to kill the mood. If we do end up dying, I will murder you for being such a party pooper.” Zack’s attempt to lighten the air did not go over well with the others.

“Goddamnit, Zack! Shut up!” The yellow ranger slapped him across the cheek, reached for her helmet, and put it on. “We’re coming.”

“To our death!” Zack called, laughing as he put his helmet on, since, even if he was endangering his life, he was not going out without a smile on his face.

Billy snapped back to his zord, completely bewildered by what he’d seen. “Trini, you kissed Zack?!”

“H-how on earth do you know that? That was years ago!” Trini stumbled over her words in surprise.

“Wait a minute! That really happened?”

“Yeah, they were each other's first kiss. It’s a really cute story actually- we’ll tell you later- but can we please not talk about it in the middle of a battle?!” Jason interrupted everything, getting them back on track quickly enough to notice the knight swinging his sword in their direction. “Crap! Dodge, you guys!”

“Dios!” Trini came as close as she usually could to cursing as she yanked on the joystick, sending her sabertooth crashing into the mastodon and knocking them out of the sword’s way. Jason and Billy weren't as lucky, though, and the swinging blade crashed into them, denting the legs of the tyrannosaurus and the triceratops, though thankfully no more damage than that.

"Gamma formation! Move out!"

"Aw, come on Jason- you know that we did not plan anything! Or wait… We did talk about it. It was the sabertooth-tyrannosaurus-pteranodon-mastodon combo attack, right?"

"Yeah. And since Billy is here, we may as well get him in it as well. Kim, you brief him. Zordon, is there any way to correct the dents in the zords?"

_ "Ai-yi-yi! No, they cannot- not until the matter making them up is broken back down into the Morphin Grid energy that created them in the first place. But when you activate them again next time, they'll be good as new." _

"Dammit Alpha, could've used some insta-repair buttons here. Anyway, Billy's caught up. Are we doing this thing or what?"

"We're doing this thing!" Zack cheered, maneuvering his zord away from Trini's and spraying a cloud of supercooled water at the monster's sword.

“You really expect me to listen to Kim?” Billy asked, groaning.

"Shut up, Mr. Skipped-A-Grade. That's the plan. Either you're in or you're outta here so you don't bother us..”

“Fine!” Billy muttered something in Urdu that his mom probably wouldn’t have approved of and shifted a lever, sending the horns of his triceratops zord hurtling through the air on chains to wrap around the sword- except the slippery ice that had formed on it thanks to Zack’s mist attack made them slide right off.

“Way to go, smart boyo.”

“Ha-ha!” Kim’s zord dove out of the sky, blasting pulses of energy at the knight that rang off his armor and made him shudder. Then she piloted it in a circle, attempting to slash him with the pteranodon's wing, but he managed to knock her out of the air. "Going downnnnn!!!- whoaaa!"

The whoa was caused by the t-rex catching her zord in its mouth and slinging it back at the knight like a frisbee. "You have to be more careful, Kim!" Jason spun the zord around and lashed out with its tail, which was spinning like a drill, hitting their foe but also hitting Trini's zord.

"Hey! What was that?"

"Sorry!"

Trini directed her zord to pounce on the knight's helmet, but it slid off and connected with a backhand slap that sent her zord flying and her into the consoles with a grunt of pain. “Zordon, how do we combine the zords- if that’s even possible? Though considering your reaction to my earlier question, there probably is a combined mode,” she noted as she struggled upright, her desire to get this over with multiplying with her inner fangirl who was freaking out about a gattai mode.

_ “The green button.” _

Trini hit the button, but nothing happened. “Guys! Press the green button!” Nothing. She shook her head and sighed. “What’s wrong, Zordon? Why isn't this working?"

_ "It's because one of you hasn't committed to the team yet." _

All eyes turned to Billy, sequestered away in the cockpit of the triceratops zord. His discomfort under their gazes was tangible. "Fine! Fine! I'm in! But only officially. Don't expect me to hang out with you during recess or anything."

"That's fine. But now,  _ kyoryu gattai! _ Oh wait, most of us aren’t even in dinosaurs. Whatever. This is gonna be awesome!” Trini’s inner fangirl took over as all five of them hit the green button in unison.

A feminine voice, speaking in Eltarian, announced through the speakers: “The zords are about to initiate the combination sequence into the megazord level one- A formation. Please take your seats and clip on the restraining belts, as gravity will be shifting throughout the sequence.”

“Wait, what?! This isn’t an airplane! What was that supposed to be?”

Everyone scrambled to sit down and to connect the seatbelts, and sure enough, fifteen seconds later, the zords started moving as though on autopilot.

Billy started freaking out when the legs of his zord folded under, but then realized that it wasn't a jerky motion and that it was probably intentional and calmed down. Then the back end of the zord bent up to a vertical angle, and he realized that he didn't know what was going on. "Uh… what is a megazord?"

"It's a humanoid warrior mech that's formed by joining all the zords." Trini broke in before Zordon could explain.

"Oh, like Voltron?"

"Wait, this is a Voltron mode? Awesome!" Kim grinned as the pteranodon attached itself to the t-rex's back, and then froze completely as it bent backwards, tilting her along with it. "Okayyyy…"

It took a few more seconds for the zords to finish joining together, and then the whole thing started to shift. Their chairs passed through gaps in the walls and popped up through the floor in what seemed to be a central cockpit, likely in the t-rex's chest.

"The megazord formation 1A is complete. Always use it for justice."

The lettering on the consoles flickered in the rangers view, flickering and reforming as regular English letters as opposed to the Eltarian script. Jason scanned his, finding the same three buttons- red, green and blue- at the very top. 

“Whoa, this is awesome! We’re together in the cockpit!” Kim called, nudging a lever forward and watching on a screen as the megazord raised a hand. "I think I'm an arm."

“Let’s do this!” Zack punched the air and yanked on a joystick, sending the other hand flying forward into the knight's chest. "Didn't mean to do that… guess that means I'm also an arm?"

Trini was fangirling about what had just happened to heaven and back. “I can’t believe it! This is so awesomeeeee!!!” Her voice rose in pitch as she spoke until she was downright squealing by the end.

“What just happened?? How the hell did this thing form? I mean clearly the zords have some sort of magnetic field that pulls them together but where did the cockpit come from and how did we get here???” Billy started ranting as he looked around, eyes widening in amazement at the complex tech setup.

The knight slashed at the megazord, the sword clanging off the metal exterior and sending them off balance. “Zordon! A little help here?!” Jason called.

"I got it!" Trini twisted a joystick and successfully stabilized the megazord. Even though she was only controlling one leg. Who knew that watching hours upon hours of Super Sentai would end up coming in handy?

Zack joined Trini and made the megazord block another slash with the shield formed from his zord’s head. “This is nice!!!”

With a groan, Billy made the megazord move forward a step. Trini made the other move as well, and then the megazord was walking freely. The two turned to each other and shared a smile and thumbs up, and that thrilled Trini so much that she started singing at the top of her lungs, earning her a few strange glances from the others.

“Saidaikyuu no brave toutoki yuushi- Gigant Kyoryuzin!” She giggled again and directed her gaze at Kim, who made her arm of the megazord reach back to where her zord had attached itself. Part of the wing disconnected, to her surprise, and formed a clear pink blade that magnetized to the fist. “Ooh, we have a sword!”

Zack messed around with something on his control panel, and then another sword detached from the pteranodon and attached itself to the other fist. “Make that  _ two _ swords. Two swords are always better than one, am I right?”

“Not if you have missiles!” Billy, who was honestly enjoying the whole mecha shtick now, joined the fun, typing something and then pressing a pair of buttons that made the triceratops leg open up and shoot a bunch of rockets.

Jason looked at him quizzically, then shrugged and rested his elbows on the console. Yes, he was glad that Billy was finally getting into it, but he hated acting as the leader. He just wasn’t cut out for that role.

“Hey Zordon, is there a way for us to swap out zords?” Trini asked, poking at random buttons inattentively. Then she instinctively jerked her hands away from the console when a red LED started flashing. “What the-”

The knight had swept his sword around, knocking the megazord sideways and making everyone fall on their panels. Jason, as he pushed himself up, found that he’d accidentally hit the blue button, and now energy was racing up the blades of the swords. He muttered something under his breath and then yelled: “Guys! We have to turn the megazord around! Fast!”

Zack and Kim cursed under their breath, Kim in Spanish, Zack quoting a fragment of Javanese that he’d picked up from his mom’s family. Trini and Billy glared at them as they moved joysticks on their panels, turning the megazord around right on time.

"Now initiating the finishing sequence. Please remain seated."

The energy had reached the tips of the swords, and the megazord brought them down in a crackling X that left burning afterimages in the rangers eyes. They suddenly understood why the megazord had gone on autopilot for that specific attack. They could hardly see, between the dark spots and the fiery explosion right outside, let alone the fact that night had already fallen.

“We won!”

“We’re starting to get good at this!”

“Oh, shut up!” Kim reached over and slapped Zack upside his head, snickering. And then, before he could respond with as good as he’d gotten, she slammed the green button on her console, and the megazord fell apart.

They met back on the ground, still morphed, and Zack immediately started yelling about what had just happened. Billy hushed him, then joined in.

Trini played with her keychain, staring off into the sky. "I think I need to go before my mom freaks out."

Kim nodded, then raised an eyebrow. "You didn't explain why you're out here in the first place."

"She said something very anti-LGBTQIA+ about one of Seb's friends, and I just couldn't sit there and take it. I'm fine. Power down."

“Good night,” Jason called as Trini opened a portal and left, followed by the rest of the rangers. It had been quite a day, and they were all feeling the effects of an extended battle.

Before he left, Jason gazed for a moment at his morpher. He had a feeling that there was going to be more up ahead, and he didn’t know if he’d be able to withstand the pressure of leading the team. He was the team dad, not the team leader. He sighed and opened a portal, brushing his hair back into place- the newly cut hair was itching him- before leaving. He certainly hoped that if there were another ranger out there, they’d be willing to take over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've been working on other stuff, which is why we haven't been posting. Quarantine is rough on the sanity, so expect a whole lot more of the authors being evil.  
> Love you all so much! Happy Hanukkah to Jason and to those who celebrate it, and to those who don't, happy random Saturday! And if you celebrate Christmas, since we probably won't post before then, merry Christmas and happy New Year!!!  
> SpringStar2004 and greenmoon830


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